The truth is out there, according to two longtime Salmon residents who say that unexplained lights have periodically flashed across the sky over the vast and remote Salmon-Challis National Forest. UFO lore has hovered on Salmon´s horizon for decades, with the majority of sightings occurring in the unpopulated backcountry. Chester Rackham, 79, who manned half a dozen fire lookouts in the Salmon-Challis for more than three decades, recalls seeing what he described as “fuzzy blue lights.” He never received a plausible explanation. During the 10 years beginning in 1975 that he stood watch at Long Tom Lookout, some 35 miles northwest of Salmon, Rackham sometimes spotted the lights flying from the night sky into the forest. “I didn´t know what they were,” said Rackham. “I saw things from different lookouts over the years but I never paid much attention. Up at Long Tom, I could see these bluish lights, but they weren´t very clear.” The vast majority of UFO sightings — tens of thousands around the world over the past 40 years — can be accounted for by natural phenomena, such as meteor showers, according to the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.

Ted Roe, head of the nonprofit National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena in Vallejo, Calif., said only 1 percent of the thousands of UFO sightings each year are of real interest because they provide traces rather than merely anecdotal evidence. But that statistic doesn´t put a damper on the faithful.

View: Full Article | Source: Idaho Statesman