By Joseph A. Citro
NORTHERN LIGHTS
About 2,000 years ago, a mysterious light in the east heralded the coming of a new era. Nowadays, with each new year, a new group of people will announce that significant changes are in the works.
I recall 1997 as such a year. Back then, certain people were convinced a time of great change had come. Maybe, some even suggested, the most dramatic revelations would launch right here in New England.
Why?
Because strange stars were shining in the skies above the North Country.
Things began in January with Beverly Higgins driving home from work in Littleton, New Hampshire. At about seven p.m., she saw something bright zoom past her vehicle, moving across the Connecticut River from Vermont. Mrs. Higgins said it was oval-shaped with at least six windows.
On January 23rd, a daylight encounter took place on Route 26. Two employees of the Balsams resort saw a large saucer-shaped something hovering vertically in the sky. Dozens of other New Hampshire aerial sightings came in from Clarksville, Columbia, Stewartstown, and Stratford.
In Vermont, the Northeast Kingdom was equally busy. Witnesses in St. Johnsbury, Hardwick, and Danville all described domed, silver-colored saucers, sometimes with windows. Generally measuring from 30 to 65 feet in diameter, they could hover silently, then soar instantly out of sight.
While some were only the size of baseballs, others were extraordinarily huge. One spotted near Pittsburg, NH, was said to be as big as an ocean liner.
Many newspapers, local and national, picked up the story of escalating UFO activity in the North Country. Raymond Fowler, director of investigations for the Mutual UFO Network, said he hadn't seen anything like it. "We've had sightings," he told the Boston Herald, “But not sighting after sighting after sighting."
Sandra Black, a Vermont customs agent, had been helping MUFON track all the airborne activity. Then in June she had a sighting of her own, not far from her home in Stewartstown, New Hampshire.
Earlier that month, a Berlin, New Hampshire woman spied two lights in the sky. One appeared round and spinning; the other looked like an arrow. The two UFOs came together, merging into one.
You may recall that this is the general area where Betty and Barney Hill reported their famous alien abduction case back in 1961. Some of the 1997 events challenge the Hills' story for sheer weirdness.
For example, a New Hampshire couple whose home overlooks the First Connecticut Lake near Pittsburg saw a bright flying object. Later, the woman discovered an inexplicable triangular mark on her leg, two and one-half inches long on each side.
Another woman saw an airborne "something" that lit up the whole side of Magalloway Mountain. Whatever it was seemed to land in a cove on First Connecticut Lake. This, of course, led to speculation about a hidden alien base somewhere in the wilds of northern New Hampshire.
In Canaan, Vermont, a teenage boy claimed he saw a big hairy monster nine feet tall. Not to be outdone, a New Hampshirite reported seeing a cricket the size of a man.
Perhaps the prize-winner for incredible "encounters" took place in Colebrook. A well-respected 73-year-old woman claimed she had been visited by 12 aliens who sat around her kitchen table, taking notes, and conferring in whispers. She said her weird visitors kept her up well past her bedtime, completely insensitive to her polite hints that they should leave.
The woman, an employee of a local nursing home, found the event very disturbing. According to coworkers, she wasn't quite herself afterwards.
So what was going on? Why all the weirdness in 1997? If the lights were not of this earth, what were they?
People hoped the startling celestial events of 1997 would lead to a millennial miracle. But things have normalized. The skies above the North Country have settled down. UFOs have become UAPs, and the mystery of such events—and our frustration with them—continues.
In other words, it’s business as usual, at least in the skies.
MIDNIGHT INSPECTION
The old-time logging camps of New England are great sources of lore. Tall trees, tough men, and rough-and-tumble times in the North Country inspired a wild cycle of sagas as epic as any western book or movie.
And the camps of northern Vermont produced ghost stories, too. Real old-fashioned hair-raisers. It's easy to imagine the following tale being told around campfires and bunkhouses up in Holland, where it is said to have actually happened.
In the 1880s, a logger named Tom, was part of a lumbering operation just south of the Canadian Border. Because he lived in Morgan, it was easy for him to go home to his wife and children on weekends.
One cold Sunday night in January, Tom and his horse Dexter were making their way back to the logging camp. It was very late, approaching midnight.
Though the moon shone brightly, the temperature was ten below zero. After every few paces, the horse would snort loudly to clear ice from his nostrils. The only other sounds were the occasional eerie hoot of an owl and the muted screech of his sled's runners scraping along the icy logging road.
Tom wore several layers of clothing, including a buffalo robe with a lighted lantern beneath it for warmth. Each time he exhaled, frost formed on his mustache and eyebrows.
He was uncomfortably cold and eager to get back to the heated bunkhouse. He hoped to catch at least a couple of hours of sleep before work began the next day at the crack of dawn.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the horse slowed and started acting nervous. Must be some animal up ahead, Tom thought, a coyote or catamount.
He squinted into the pale moonlight that illuminated the trail before him. Then it became obvious: it was a man. His shadow was moving silently among the logs that had been piled at the perimeter of the camp. Though the man’s face was not visible, he was nonetheless a familiar figure, easily recognized from behind. The Scotch cap, the scarf, the particular droop of the shoulders all said that it was Riley Caswell, owner of the lumber company.
But why would Riley be out here in the middle of the night?
Riley's biggest failing, as all the men knew, was that he would never delegate any of his authority—not even to his son-in-law, who would one day inherit the business.
At this midnight moment, Riley was apparently inspecting the progress of his lumbering operation. It was just like him to do it in secret; he'd never want his woods boss, John Tabor, to get the impression Riley didn't have complete confidence in him.
But then Tom remembered that Riley was supposedly laid up with the grippe at his daughter's house in Derby. Still, a little thing like the flu wouldn't keep a tough man like Riley down. He probably had his son-in-law drive him to the camp for this midnight inspection.
Tom called out to the old man, thinking maybe he'd like a lift. But Riley ignored him.
He called again and was ignored a second time.
To hell with him, Tom thought. If he don't want anybody to know he's up here, fine! Tom pulled the reins and clucked the horse to move along.
He glanced one more time in Riley Caswell's direction, but the old man had moved out of sight.
The next morning Tom related the incident to woods boss John Tabor and asked, "Why do you suppose old Riley was up here poking around last night?"
"Well, Tom," John said, "there's something damned funny about this. You know, Joe Bush come in early this morning with supplies, and he told me old Riley died last night... was right around midnight."
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author and folklorist known for collecting New England’s ghost stories, legends, and strange-but-true lore. His most recent book is The Vermont Ghost Experience, available at local bookstores or wherever books are sold. You can also ask your local library to order it for your enjoyment and the enjoyment of other library patrons. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.