Investigation of recent Dixon, Missouri sightings by MIG investigator Gary Hart. Wednesday 2/25 to Thursday 2/26/2009.

I was informed of recent UFO sightings and related anomalous phenomena reports supposedly originating in the Dixon MO area by Barbara Becker, MIG representative. After reviewing the case reports - the first had come through the NUFORC reporting process, the next two from the MIG report input page and the last from the main witness directly - I agreed to travel to the Dixon area ASAP so that witnesses could provide further detail of their sightings while the situation was still fresh in their mind and to make contacts so that any new sightings could be reported accurately and in a timely manner. I printed out detailed area maps showing both road numbers and topographic information so sighted objects and witness' locations could be plotted accurately.

Contact was established with the first witness, Tim, who was to be our main area contact. At that time Tim promoted himself as having a business, the Dixon Weather Service, which maintained contact with area law enforcement agencies, federal weather service organizations such as NOAA and the National Weather Service and who acted as a spotter for area weather activity. I arrived in Dixon at 5pm on 2/25 and proceeded to drive the roads and locate the homes of the three independent witnesses (VS, RY and DT) and the place of business for the Dixon Weather Service. I then met with Tim at 7pm to interview him about the first sighting (1/24) and interview his friends who were also involved in that first sighting.

Tim led me to believe that he had filed police reports for all the area sightings though he could not have known the other witnesses - red flag #1. (NOTE: These additional reports came in on the MIG website Event Report Form and could not have been known by Tim, unless he filed them. Becker.)  My standard procedure here is to tell the witness to stop doing this as it is not helpful and may actually harm the future report process.

Tim drove me to a house where I met five people and I was introduced to Danny and John, the two other persons who were with Tim during the sighting on 1/24. Danny was driving Tim's weather service truck and "only saw the object/light on the ground, he did not see it fly in" as Tim did from the passenger seat. John was in the truck on the second trip out to the sighting location which is about ten minutes from town. Dylan was a passenger in the truck on the first trip and we drove to pick him up before driving out to the sighting location though he said nothing and did not go inside Tim's friends' house because he was not liked nor welcome there. I was concentrating on writing down location information, facts from the additional witnesses and information that was coming out based on my questions about whether any of the persons present had seen strange lights before.

Tim showed me where the 1/24 sighting occurred and John said that Tim, Danny and Dylan were on the sighting scene for approximately 3 minutes before calling him, driving back to town, picking John up and driving out to the sighting location again where they watched the unmoving light that was "near or on the ground, shining/beaming from behind a house and barn through what looked like fog and was lighting up the entire valley". The original sighting report claims that after the initial 3 minute sighting the truck's occupants drove to the DWS "office" to file a NUFORC report and ask the NWS if they had anything on radar (this will always produce a negative answer as they do not look for objects on the ground nor do they note flying objects.) When John indicated at 2 am that he needed to go to bed, the truck occupants drove back to town without seeing the object/light leave.

John estimated a total sighting time of 1-1/2 hours though the times given from the original sighting report and the time John said he wanted to go home add up to half that. The object/light's position did not change through the entire time it was reported on or near the ground. Tim claims only he saw the light fly in a southerly direction from the Brinktown area to the "landing location" since he was a passenger in the truck and facing north however the witness statement infers that Tim was directing Danny's driving as he was making several turns down gravel roads without Danny's ever seeing anything but a stationary light which given the sighting location seems to make little sense.

John added that they had seen 3-4 cows milling around the fence line "as if they were scared of something" and that their cell phones kept cutting out when they were originally at the sighting location and that for several days afterwards they could not get any cell service in that area. John also stated that as a child he had seen several strange lights while driving with his family though I should note that I saw a military transport craft flying over the area that first night so it was obvious that the Dixon area is on the main flight path for aircraft coming in to Ft. Leonard Wood, a major Army base just a few miles south of Dixon.

Tim stated that he knew of several areas nearby with "strange activity" in years past including an apparent crop circle seen somewhere on Hwy. W back in the early 90s. Tim said that he saw an article in the local paper, the Dixon Pilot, back then but that he had recently gone to the newspaper and asked them if they remembered the incident and article and they treated him as if "they thought he was crazy." 

The next day, 2/26, I drove out to talk to the next two sightings witnesses since they had left contact information on their report forms though these two had said they did not want to be contacted. We are going to revisit this point later. I first talked to Mr. RY who, on 2/13, had supposedly reported a family friend up the road receiving a knock on their door at 2:30AM from a neighbor who claimed seeing a "monster" walking down the road. Both persons went outside and saw "the monster" again then saw a strange fire in the woods that quickly went out. Mr. RY stated that he knew nothing of this and did not file a report with anyone. I was somewhat taken aback by this though we continued to have a cordial conversation and talked about other things including that Mr. RY’s neighbor had claimed he had seen a "haint" or ghost on at least two occasions but that "he was known for making things up."

Since the "monster' was seen along Mr. RY’s road and the next road up, I proceeded to walk up the road and knocked on doors where it appeared the owner was home. I passed three houses where the occupant was away then saw a man in the yard of a forth house and talked to him a little bit. We talked about his dogs to start off since I have the same breed of dogs as he, just to make small talk to start. I then asked if he had ever seen strange lights in the area or heard the monster story and he said he had not. He also stated that a Deputy Sheriff, Jerry Vale, lived next door and that I should talk to him. I drove over and talked to officer Vale, his wife and father. They all said they had never seen any strange lights even though they had lived in the area for 35 years and that "they knew all about Tim." I did not pursue character statements yet because I wanted to stay focused on the UFO facts so I left to talk to another witness who lived nearby, Mr. VS who supposedly made out a sighting report for 2/8/09. After starting a cordial conversation by telling Mr. VS I was looking into the geology of the area and following up on sightings of strange lights, Mr. VS stated that "he had not filed a report of any kind and knew nothing" about the report I then read to him. Mr. VS stopped me when I told him he was 64 as stated in the report by saying "I am 80."

At this point I collected my thoughts and made a mental note that Mr. VS probably did not own a computer and would not know how to file a report if he had one. I then noticed that all four reports, the last one for a Mr. DT coming directly from Tim himself, had the same IP number at their top so all had come from the same computer. Driving back into town, I found Tim and told him that two reports were hoaxes; they appeared to come from the same computer as Tim had in his office. For the record Tim said "I don't know how that could be." I also told Tim that I was going to call the last witness, Mr. DT and that would tell me if the whole situation was made up or not. Tim showed me the IP number for one of his computers (he has at least six running showing weather maps of all kinds) and it was not the same as the computer in question. I did not have him check the other computers' IP numbers.

I drove away and called the final witness, a Mr. DT.  He stated he knew nothing about talking to Tim or any sighting that supposedly occurred around his house. I read the report to Mr. DT that Tim had filed with MIG about Mr. DT having seen the woods light up around his house and he said "that never happened." As far as I was concerned, the case(s) closed at that point so I drove out of town.

A few days later MIG received another sighting report from the Dixon area that did have the IP number of Tim’s main computer (174.131.231.111) whose IP number I had checked. Not surprisingly, this time the report was filed without any contact information.

Gary Hart // MIG investigator