UFO History: November 27, 1976

For our entry for November 27, we discovered an interesting sighting on the UFO Evidence website.

This sighting took place on November 27, 1976 in  Milbank, South Dakota around 1900 Hrs. The account was compiled by field investigator William M. Moore and appeared in the APRO Bulletin, Vol. 25 No. 5 (Nov. 1976)

With temperatures hovering around zero degrees, eyewitness Mike Foss left a local auto body shop in Milbank intending to return home by car. He was travelling south on highway 77 out of Milbank, he suddenly noticed a "tremendously bright, brilliant orange light" - perhaps better described as "a light without a source" -off to the west. 

Foss stopped for a better look. (Note that he did not leave the car, nor did he notice any peculiar effects on the car's electrical system or engine.) At first thinking that he might be witnessing a helicopter he was not immediately apprehensive about it: however, he soon realized that whatever it was he was observing, was clearly not any sort of helicopter he was familiar with. 

Once he returned home, he was outside with his father and realized that whatever he had left behind in that field was now perched a few feet in the air neatly between the hog house and the barn, about 100 feet from where they were standing. For the next twenty to twenty-five minutes, the three Fosses watched as a large, somewhat egg-shaped object, blue at its base, but flashing multicolored lights (mostly red) higher up and having two protruding legs or antennae, as it first hovered between the hog house and the barn, and then drifted (or appeared to drift) slowly straight away from them and off to the southwest, diminishing in size and intensity until it finally disappeared in the distance. 

The changing colored lights on the body of the object were described as being somewhat like a color-wheel used to light up Christmas trees in different colors, except that the colors did not change rapidly, but seemed to "melt" into one another. Orange, white, blue, red, and green were noted.

This strange object returned again on three separate occasions between the initial sighting on November 27, and its most recent appearance at about 8:00 P.M. Saturday evening, December 11th. On two of these occasions, it was sighted only at extreme distances as a bright orange light maneuvering off to the southwest of the house. Because of this distance factor, no positive identification could be made.On the third occasion, the sighting was strikingly similar to the first. Again the object positioned itself between the barn and the hog house, again the weather was clear and cold, and as before, it remained in the area twenty to twenty-five minutes following the same pattern of slowly receding to the southwest. On this occasion, Mike's automatic police radio band scanner was on in the living room. At the appearance of the object, Mike noticed that the scanner had locked on to frequency seven and was emitting bursts of static. Frequency seven is a VHF frequency (approx. 140 MHz) used by the Minnesota Highway Patrol.

This time, Mike Foss called Milbank police and asked that a car be dispatched. Police Chief Ben Amsden personally came out but by the time he arrived, the object was only a bright light in the distance. (Amsden, however, did notice an orange glow in the vicinity of the Foss farm while proceeding toward it in the squad car.) Also reported to have seen the object, this time in the area of the KMSD radio tower about two and one half miles from the Foss house, are Mr. Don Adams, bartender at the local VFW club, and his wife.