New Info & Interview surfaces regarding the famous The 1988 U.S. Coast Guard Encounter w/ the Lake Erie UFO's!

“The 1988 U.S. Coast Guard Encounter with a UFO is one of the top 12 Government Documents That Take UFOs Seriously” – Richard Dolan 

Coast Guard personnel responding to citizen reports of unusual aerial activity over Lake Erie on March 4, 1988, witnessed classic UFOs near Eastlake, OH. Sheila and Henry Baker were driving home with their three children about 8:35 P.M., after taking them out to dinner, and were almost home. As they neared the waterfront, Sheila noticed something hovering over the lake; they drove down to the beach to investigate and got out of the car. The moon was bright, and there was ice on the lake; Sheila could hear it cracking like claps of thunder. 

Plainly visible was a huge, gunmetal gray, football-shaped, silent object rocking back and forth, blinding white light emanating from both ends. Then the object began moving, swinging one end toward the shore and descending. The Bakers became frightened, ran back to their car, and fled. When they got home, the object was still visible from a window facing the lake. Sheila hid the children in a closet, fearing that the thing might come and get them. 

The object moved out over the ice and continued to descend, with red and blue lights now flashing in sequence along its lower edge. Sheila called the Eastlake police to report a UFO, and after several referrals, with no one expressing much interest, was told that unusual activity over the lake would be the responsibility of the Coast Guard. Suddenly five or six bright yellow triangular objects shot out of the center of the large object and began darting around independently (satellite objects). Once they stopped and hovered point up around the parent object, then sped away to the north, turned east, then inland toward the Perry nuclear power plant. 

At this point Sheila called the Coast Guard, which sent a team to their house to investigate. Seaman James Power and Petty Officer John Knaub arrived towing a Boston Whaler (a seaworthy boat) just in case. They told the Bakers that they had seen some lights over the lake from Fairport Harbor and thought they were flares, maybe fishermen trapped out on the ice. However, when Sheila pointed to the main craft and some of the triangular objects still zipping around it, the men drove closer to the lake to investigate, accompanied by the Bakers. At the lakefront they could hear the ice rumbling and roaring. 

In their incident report sent later by teletype to Coast Guard headquarters in Detroit, MI, the men were quoted as saying that “the ice was cracking and moving abnormal amounts as the object came closer to it.” 

Power and Knaub gave a running report on what they were seeing to their base via the two-way radio in their Chevy Suburban. The window was down, and the Bakers overheard them saying words to the effect: “Be advised the object appears to be landing on the lake . . . 

There are other objects moving around it. Be advised these smaller objects are going at high rates of speed. There are no engine noises and they are very, very low.” 

Abruptly one of the triangles zoomed straight toward the Coast Guard vehicle, a blur of light, then veered east, straight up, and came down beside the parent object. Two witnesses in separate locations also reported seeing the triangles. Cindy Hale was walking her dog when she noticed a triangular object hovering overhead, and her dog began to whine and cower (animal reactions). She took the dog indoors and came back out to watch. The triangle flashed a series of multicolored lights, then accelerated and was gone without making a sound (hover-acceleration). 

Tim Keck was using his astronomical telescope when one of the triangles caught his eye. He had a cheap throwaway camera with him and snapped a picture of the object before it flew away over the horizon. The photograph was analyzed by optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, who considered it to be a legitimate.

Here is the actual Coast Guard UFO Report…

I want to bring the reader to the attention of a testimony from a witness of the ’1988 Coast Guard Lake Erie Sighting’, Sheila Baker. She is mentioned in the article above, but there is a longer, quite rare interview with her as well that I think we need to take a look at, because it’s so typical for those ‘Lake Erie Sightings’. The interview was done by Richard P. Dell’Aquila and Dale B. Wedge. Unfortunately, this interview is not very known in the mainstream media and in the UFO community, although it’s such a famous case, so I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to include it here. These two witnesses, I believe stick holes in all the official denials and unrealistic explanations to the 1988 incident.[4]

“On March 26, 1988, two civilian witnesses to the Eastlake UFOs (W1 and her husband W2) who were on the beach with the Coast Guard March 4, 1988 were interviewed. The following is a partial transcript of that interview, conducted by Dale Wedge (DW) and Rick Dell’Aquila (RD). Several other witnesses have also been interviewed and photographic evidence has been obtained. To date, however , the Coast Guard has refused further information or interviews of its personnel concerning the UFO sighting that night near the CEI electric power plant. The investigation continues.

RD …Please tell us what happened in your own words.

W1 We were coming home (on March 4, 1988) and I saw something over the lake…and it wasn’t moving and I had my husband go down the street and I said, “Go down to the beach because I’m telling you there is something out there.” He kept laughing at me. I said I was serious and we went down there. We got out of the car and walked to the beach. I had left the kids in the car and you could see it. It looked almost like the shape of a blimp and had lights on both sides. One end was brighter and the other end was a little bit dimmer, but one end flashed. It wasn’t a constant light that was on. It seemed to rock a little bit–you could just see it rocking back and forth. It hovered and didn’t make any noise. The ice was cracking really bad and the ice down here doesn’t crack like that. It was making like–it was rumbling and cracking it was real, real loud. There were no animals barking or nothing. Around here we have a lot of dogs and that was surprising because you always hear the dogs out. There were no animals–just the real loud noise out of the lake. We were standing on the beach and my husband and I were looking at this thing. It started to turn and I thought–you know how you get really eerie feelings? I said to myself there i s something up there. You could see it was a ship or something because you could see there was a gray line like a football kind of thing in the middle, but you couldn’t really see it. You could just see it was there. Do you understand what I’m saying?

RD We are going to ask you to draw a sketch in a while.

W1 You could see the whole thing, but not real well. You could see there was a middle to it. We stayed and we watched it for a while…(interview interrupted by phone call).

DW Okay, we are back on. We had a phone call interruption.

W1 …Okay, we sat down at the beach and while we were watching this I had the kids in the car and I was getting kind of “weirded-out” you know, because you hear about these things, but you never really believe it until you see them. It started to turn toward us. It was coming in closer to land and beacuse my kids were in the car, I didn’t want to stay down at the beach, because you never know what’s going to happen or if it was going to come down to get us or whatever.

RD In other words, you were concerned for your safety?

W1 Yeah, because it was coming closer to us. You could see…it seemed like it knew we were there. We were the only ones down there at the time and I was getting really nervous. I told my husband, “You know, we’ve got two kids in the car. Let’s get them home and safe so we don’t have to worry about anything.” He said okay, so we got the kids back to the house and I put them in their room and I locked the door because I had a real eerie feeling, you know after we left there. We were down there a while looking at it and we came home to watch it from our living room.

RD When you say “we”–who else was there with you?

W1 My husband and my kids. So I was looking at it from here and I said to my husband, “Well, maybe I’m nuts, I don’t know, but let’s call Sue,” who lives across the street, “and see if she sees the same thing that we do.” So I did, I called he r and her and her son went outside and they saw the same thing and we kept hearing this noise at the lake and that really scared us because, like I said, the lake doesn’t make noises like that. We watched it most of the evening and when it started to come down, we all got real curious and we all went back down. Sue drove down to the beach and she saw it with her son and her husband thinks she’s totally “cracked-up.” (Laughter.) But they all did. Everybody thinks, you know, we didn’t see what we did. So now we get down there and the thing’s starting to land. You co uld see like red and blue lights and they said they were planets and gasses and nonsense like that, but they were actual lights starting to flutter. But before this, while it was still in the sky, there were like little triangle “planes”, about, there were, we counted about five–we weren’t sure if there were five or six, but we counted five of them that were running back and forth. They were going up and down, like hovering. They didn’t make any noise, but they were going REALLY fast across the sky and by this time the Coast Guard was down there. I had called the Coast Guard, I would say at least twelve times and they kept telling me, “Well, your crazy and nothing’s wrong…(Phone call interruption).

DW Pause for phone call.

DW Okay, we’re back on.

W1 So now what had happened was these planes were like, looked like they had come out of it, because they came out of nowhere. We saw them come out…I don’t know if it was on the side or on the front of it, but you could tell they ca me out of it because they were real little. They looked like little yellow triangles. They were real bright and went super, super fast.

They went up and down like this, instead of, you know how a plane goes this way? Well, they were going up and down and like diagonally at it and they were hovering around it and then they started shooting out toward the lake and this time the Coast Guard saw all this because that’s when they sent their people out when these little planes started appearing. And w hen they g ot down here, they saw these things and they were coming real close to the coastline. That’s when these kids were getting scared.

RD When you say “kids,” do you mean Coast Guard personnel?

W1 Yeah, they were young boys. They were real scared and we got REALLY scared because we were right down on the beach there and we figured the coastline that would be it. We were afraid they would attack their truck, because their truck had lights on it. So w e told them, “Turn off your lights.” Because the more they kept coming closer and closer to the lights of the truck, because the truck was parked on the hill. There’s like a little hill over there. They could see the lights, because they seemed to be coming at the lights. And so we had them shut their lights off because we were scared. You never know what was going to go on. We didn’t know what was in these ships or planes or whatever they were because we couldn’t tell, but I’ve never seen a yellow triangle fly around the sky.

RD It was yellow?

W1 Yeah. Bright, REAL BRIGHT. It looked like a light. That’s what it looked like. It looked like a bright light. You know how a car light you’d have? It looked just like that, but it glowed. It was yellow.

RD Was there any portion of it that was brighter than any other portion of it?

W1 No. It was all real bright.

RD Just one solid, bright light?

W1 Yeah, little bright triangles. You know like the little glider models you get for your kids? There in triangles. You make paper airplanes…Like that shape? That’s exactly what they were, and they were solid. They weren’t…it didn’t have wings or anything else.

RD Was it even-sided? All three sides of equal length?

W1 No, no, it was more pointed like that (gesturing).

RD Okay.

W1 It was exactly like that (forming triangle with her fingers). The front was more pointy. How’s that? I flunked geometry by the way.

RD Okay.

W1 But it was more pointy, almost like the tip of an arrow.

RD Okay, so i n other words, the two sides were longer…

W1 Were longer than the base…I was wondering why you were laughing at me.

RD We’re not laughing at you.

DW No. We’re not.

(Wedge and Dell’Aquila had reacted to the fact that the triangular objects described by W1 were identical to those described by other independent witnesses that night and identical to the bright yellow triangular object one witness photographed.)

W1 Okay. They were all solid bright light. There was no part of it that was darker than others. We saw it real close down at the shoreline. But when they started coming at this thing and they went back into it, too, we thought maybe it disappeared over the lake. Well, here they had gone, shooting out over the lake and coming, then all of a sudden we saw them about an hour later, coming back REALLY fast, and they came right into that ship.

RD Did you see anything open up on the ship, a door or anything like that?

W1 No, but they went right into it because they went rig ht between the lights, so it had to be an opening on the side of it, because they went right into it. They came up and then they went right into it.

RD Were you able to observe which direction they left.

W1 They went out that way, toward Canada…they went east too, this way. But none of them went that way, toward Cleveland. They all went this way.

RD Did any of them go south or southeast?

W1 No. They stayed over the lake…they went east and north toward Canada, and that’s where basically they stayed. When you saw them shooting out, it was just almost right over land and we had seen them come out and said to my husband,” What in the world is that?” He was just laughing. He said, “You’re just…” and he got, you know, he goes, “Yeah, sure, I’m going to tell my mother we were sitting home watching UFOs tonight.” But, that’s what happened. They were there and then we saw them like I said, about an hour later, come back in the same direction they came in, and they all went right back into the thing, one at a time, too. It wasn’t like they all swooped down on it and went back into it. They went back in it one at a time, and then the ship seemed to land in the lake. It was about maybe an hour difference, an hour lapse. The ship started setting down on Lake Erie. That’s when all these colored lights started coming on when it sat down. You could see the lights as it sat down on the lake, because it was all ice. As soon as it landed, about five minutes later after it landed, you coul d still see it, the red and the yellow lights and the blue lights, running around the bottom on the lake, because it was a clear night, it was beautiful. Then as soon as all the lights went out on it, the lake stopped cracking. Everything got dead silent. There wasn’t animals–nothing. Everything got totally quiet. That was it.

DW Can you give us a time, approximate time?

RD When did you first see it?

W1 About six. I think it was about six. My husband said it was later but I don’t think so, because it was just getting dark.

DW It doesn’t get dark until about 6:30

W1 Okay, then maybe it was a little later, about 6:30 or 7:00 P.M. It wasn’t exactly dark, but it wasn’t light out. It was like dusk, almost, where it’s just starting to get dark.

RD When did you last observe it?

W1 I’d say about 11:30 P.M.

RD You were down there for 4-1/2 to 5 hours?

W1 No. We came back up to the house and watched it. When it started to set, we went back down.

RD I see. At the same time, were you able to observe any of the objects in the sky that you would recognize?

W1 Oh, yeah, absolutely because we were there, we kept looking at them and looking at them to see, you know, we were curious. Even from the house, when it started moving in-land, you could see, you know, what it was if you looked real close.

RD Where was the moon for example?

W1 The moon?

RD Yeah. Was it out?

W1 Yeah, the re were moon, the stars were beautiful. All the stars were out.

RD Was it a clear night?

W1 Yeah. it was real clear.

RD Did you notice where the planets were?

W1 The planets that they told me this was?

RD Well, the planets.

W1 I didn’t really…we weren’t looking for the planets, but they would have been behind it, and farther off.

RD Is there any question in your mind that what you were looking at was something that you should have recognized, like the planets or…?

W1 No. It was definitely a ship, because y ou could see that there was a center of it. You could also see planes coming out of it, or little vehicles or whatever they are that came out of it and we saw them go back in it. We were almost right directly underneath it…The more we stayed down at the beach, it was turning toward us to come toward us and I got scared, thinking well, maybe someone would come out or get us or something will happen…If we could see it, I knew it could see us, because we were right out in the open on flat land looking at it…

The interview continued for several more minutes and W1 drew some sketches.

W1 (Drawing) The (light) on the left hand side of the object blinked constantly.

RD Was there a regular pattern to the blinking?

W1 It was almost like if you looked out the lake, you know how they have those (lights) when you come in from the lake? Almost like that. (Phone interruption)

DW We are going to pause for another phone call.

RD What color was the object between the lights?

W1 …gunmetal gray .

RD Did it seem solid?

W1 Yes.

RD Did it seem to have a three-dimensional shape?

W1 You could tell it was almost rounded. It was like a football…It was all the same color and you could definitely see the outline of it. We were standing SO close, that you could see the outline. It was totally dark in the center of it and at the top, but you could tell the difference between the sky and the shape.

RD Did it seem to have hard edges or fuzzy edges?

W1 No, they were very clear edges…

The interview continued and W1′s husband (W2) arrived home.

W2 …Boy, I’ll tell you you ought to see this thing, I watched this thing down at the beach with the Coast Guard guys. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It had these guys running, they were so scared. It was strange. As it got lower to the water, all these little, what we thought were jets, came and hovered right above this thing. We assumed they were those Harrier jets that can just hover. When they got closer, these jets came about forty or fifty feet above the ice and they were going back and forth across the lake unbelievably fast. They were covering a fifty mile stretch, like that (Snapping his fingers).

RD What shape were they?

W2 We thought that they looked like little jets. That’s what we assumed. Then when they got closer, they were so little, they were smaller than a one-seated Cessna. They didn’t make any noise.

DW What about shape?

W2 We couldn’t tell. All I could see was lights. I could tell you that it looked like a triangle. That’s what it looked like. It just looked like a plain triangle. We couldn’t tell a tail fin or anything like that. It looked like a triangle because it was lights down the wings and on the tip of it.

RD You mean at the top of the triangle there was a light?

W2 Yeah. There was a light.

W1 Now see, I didn’t see that. I saw just a plain light.

DW Do you know what color it was?

W2 One was white and one was bright white…you could tell they were definitely connected, because if the nose dropped, the tail went up exactly. But anyhow, when the thing got closer to the water, the one bright light started twirling like all different colors: red, green, blue, yellow, and then it just sunk into the water and one end was white and one end was red. Then it just sat in the water for about a half hour and then it was gone. While it was sitting on the ice, those planes were hovering above it. You could see that they were flashing lights down on it. It was like five jets within maybe a quarter mile area of each other, and all of a sudden they were just gone. They just went up in the air and out, just out.

RD About what time did they leave like that?

W2 9:30 or a quarter to ten…

DW Did you talk with the Coast Guard guys?

W2 Yeah, we sat and talked to them for a half hour. We watched the thing for an hour.

DW What were they saying?

W2 They couldn’t believe it . They said they never saw nothing like it in the world. The guy said he’s been in the service for years and he said he knows that a Harrier jet can’t take off and fly that fast from a start. This thing got up so high in the air and was gone so fast, it was seconds and it was gone out of view. The night was so clear that we could see for miles and miles and miles…These two guys were so scared. They thought, first our assumption was it was a satellite, maybe from Canada, that went bad and it was coming down over the lake. They told me that they believed it was Canadian air maneuvers. But then when they saw these planes, they came about five miles off shore and they were going about fifty feet above the ice. You could just see the ice and stuff rippling behind them. They got nervous because they didn’t want their truck to be seen…they were afraid maybe a missile would be shot at them or something.

RD Is there any confusion in your mind that it was maybe the moon or the stars…?

W2 No. No, not the first night. The second night it was much, much much higher in the air. Miles and miles. But the second night, it appeared at the same time and dropped down in the lake at the same time…But the first night, no way. We went and saw that thing. That thing was no more than three miles in the air.

RD You’re aware that the newspaper accounts are that it was the planets?

W2 Planets, right. No that’s BULL****, because I went and stood out on the lake and looked up at them and I saw the thing moving. You could see it pivo ting like this (gesturing in a rocking motion like a teeter-totter). When it got way out over the lake, that thing just started spinning around, it was all different kinds of lights…The interview continued and more sketches were made by W1. In being asked to draw the small objects, she drew a triangle.

RD When it landed on the ice, did it seem like it went under the surface of the water, or did it rest on the ice for a period of time.

W1 I don’t know. Sue saw it too from her back yard. You could see it sit down though. It didn’t look like it sunk. We went down the next day to see if we could see anything. All you could see was ice broken everywhere. Huge, huge chunks of ice…

DW Which Coast Guard Station?

W2 & W1 Fairport Harbor.

DW Did they come up, did they drive up? That’s quite a way down isn’t it?

W2 They drove this way. They said they could see the lights from their Coast Guard station.

W1 Right. They were watching it and observing it from the Coast Guard station itself and didn’t know what to make out of the little lights.

DW Did they tell you why they decided to come up here?

W2 Yeah, because they got so many calls that they wanted to come and investigate it. They had even called us back a few times that night.

W1 They said it was totally out of their league. They didn’t know what it was or what it could be. They didn’t want to speculate. They also said to us, even on the next day, that the Army and I guess, NASA did not want them to investigate any further. They did not want them to go out on the ice, because they have a cutter. They could have gone out to see where it landed, because their men made a report too. Somewhere along the line…and they could not get an answer from NASA, they couldn’t get an answer from anybody. And they were told NOT to do anything about it, that it was out of their league, it was

RD They were told it was out of their league?

W1 Uh- huh.

RD That’s a quote?

W1 Yes. It was ou t of their league and out of their hands. That’s exactly what they told us. I talked to…a person in command there and he got on the phone with me and that’s exactly what he told me also. That they had to forward all their information to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and a place in Detroit, which I don’t know where in Detroit they were going to send something, but they said the were NOT ALLOWED to investigate it any further, that that’s what they we re told and to stay out of it…I wrote down their names because I was so upset that they called the police on me.

DW Did they ever tell you not to talk about it?

W1 They told me that it was just more or less, that it was out of their league and no one would, more or less, believe me and I think that’s what they were getting at when they talked to me…I mean, they sent the police to my house, and that was more a harassment than anything else. You could tell they didn’t want to talk about it either, because I called them back the next day and they were real snotty to me on the phone.

Investigation forms were then completed, and the photograph taken on the same night in a location several miles to the southeast was shown to the witnesses. They confirmed that the triangular object shown in the photograph was identical to the triangular objects they had observed on the same night. Clearly, these witnesses, the Coast Guard, other independent witnesses who have been interviewed, and the photographic evidence all confirm that the Venus/Jupiter hypothesis offered by the skeptical “experts” as the ultimate solution to this case has no merit or validity. The responses of these experts are invited.

Rick Dell’Aquila and Dale Wedge”[5]

Shortly after this interview was done, Rick Dell’Aquila posted an update to the 1988 incident:

“UPDATE TO N.E. OHIO UFO FLAP: On Saturday, April 2, 1988 at about 3:15 P.M., Eastern Time 

Flat black helicopter was reported to fly at tree-top level over the N.E. Ohio home of one of the witnesses whose prior sighting has been filed with MUFON by Dale B. Wedge an d Rick Dell’Aquila, and recounted on Paranet (see LAKERIEn.UFO). The helicopter was observed by at t 5 individuals from three separate residences in the neighborhood, and was in sight for 2-3 minutes. The unmarked and unlit helicr had a military appearance as it approached slowly from the west, making a loud sound peculiarly similar to that made by a small airplane rather than a helicopter. The apparently windowless craft was observed to fly eastward, before turning to the south and disappearing over the line of trees. It apparently caused “snow” on a television screen. The investigation of the continuing series of UFO events in this area continues and updates will be provided to MUFON and Paranet as they become available. –Rick Dell’Aquila”