40 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Plato's Cave Projected Onto the Hudson River Valley Skies, August 25, 2003
Despite its ominous title, Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt is a sensible, sober book on the subject of unexplained aerial phenomena. Witnesses to the events and active participants in the investigation during the period described, the authors have limited the book to examining the dramatic 13-year UFO wave that took place over the Hudson River Valley from 1982 through 1995. During that period, the UFOs were seen by an estimated 7,000 people and reported to authorities by at least a tenth of that number.
The "boomerang-shaped," brightly-lit UFOs behaved like brazen tricksters and interactive provocateurs during their reign of the night skies. Most often described as "bigger than a football field," the silent objects flew less that 500 feet above heavily populated commercial and residential areas, stopped traffic on freeways, turned sideways and spiraled through the air like Ferris wheels, dived into and flew out of bodies of water, hovered over single homes and cars for minutes on end, responded to lights flashed in their direction with dramatic light displays of their own, and disappeared over the horizon in bursts of unbelievable acceleration. Several witnesses reported that the objects dematerialized--or "vanished"--right before their eyes.
On the night of July 24th 1990, an enormous, apparently nonchalant UFO hovered over the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor Complex and came within thirty feet of the only reactor in operation. Awestruck plant personnel had the object on camera for more than fifteen minutes, and were given tentative orders to shoot it down. Helpless police officers confronted the UFOs and repeatedly explained to panicked callers that they did not know what the objects were. The FAA reported that witnesses were seeing nothing more than small lightweight planes flying together in formation, an explanation few accepted. The national media ignored the sightings year after year.
However, identically-described objects were reported in the area as early as the mid-Fifties, and have been reported in subsequent decades from countries all over the world. Commonly known today as "black triangles," a number of theorists--experts and amateurs alike--believe the triangles are the product of United States "black operations" military programs. The most common theory is that the objects are enormous "solid dirigibles," or "stealth blimps," that function as transportation systems for large numbers of soldiers and masses of heavy equipment.
Were the Hudson Valley UFOs secret advanced-model solid dirigibles? If so, why did they repeatedly fly over areas where they would inevitably be seen by a great number of affluent, educated people? What practical purpose could their colorful, complex light patterns have had? If the objects were created to carry government troops, why has no soldier come forward to discuss his or her experience on such a vessel? If the United States has access to such incredibly advanced technology, why weren't these ships utilized in recent wars? Why are the United State's space shuttles still built with comparatively rudimentary and unreliable technology?
Though the presented evidence often seems highly credible, it is difficult to accept that the United States government, as it is generally understood to exist, can presently create and control objects like those reported here. Nor is there any sound reason to believe that the Hudson Valley UFOs were extraterrestrial craft. Interpreted imaginatively, the objects seem like nothing so much as highly advanced, unmanned investigatory probes or other scientific tools--immense to us but tiny, perhaps even microscopic, to their creators--from some greater plane of reality that were intermittently thrust into mankind's perception, and then removed from it with equal ease. Like objective correlatives to the allegory of Plato's Cave, the objects seemed like tangible, mocking proof that the universe is a much stranger place than mankind, with its dogmatic "consensus reality," wants to accept. This is true regardless of the genuine facts concerning their nature and origin.
The authors remain admirably restrained and objective throughout, hesitantly putting forth ideas but drawing no conclusions (except for one unfortunate slip in Chapter 16 when the UFOs are described as "something [that is] not of this Earth"). A number of witnesses of the phenomena-including police officers--are quoted at length. Reports of alien abduction phenomena, what some witnesses called "telepathic communication" with the object, and CE-IIIs are noted but left purposefully undiscussed.
As Jung concluded in his "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies," "Something is seen, but what?"
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Excellent Synopsis of an Elusive Series of Incidents, November 2, 2000
This book was, I believe, Hynek's last, and was primarilly written by Phil Imbrogno. It is a good read, frequently backed up with eyewitness testimony and impressions. Several incidents are covered, leaving little doubt that people in the Hudson Valley saw SOMETHING, but what? The flying triangles have since been seen in other areas, and skeptics still point to government "explanations" which seem to leave as much unexplained as the initial reports themselves.
Readers familiar with the recent "Stealth Blimp" sightings in Illinois, the triangles over Belgium, or the Phoenix lights will spot similarities. There are also apparently sincere witnesses who completely disagree with each other-sometimes over the same sighting-as to what has been seen.
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