Story By Ken Hulsey
As a rational person, I can explain away most of the strange occurrences I experienced during my teenage years in Albuquerque. However, one incident still puzzles me to this day. In August 1980, my best friend, my family, and I witnessed a large, glowing green orb hovering motionless in the night sky directly over Albuquerque for over an hour before it disappeared.
On that pleasant late summer evening, the weather was warm but not too hot, so my friend and I were relaxing on the patio. While my mother washed dishes in the kitchen and my friend's father tended to his garden outside, we noticed something unusual in the night sky.
Suddenly, an extremely large, bright light came into view, hovering over the city. Intrigued, my friend and I rose from the patio table and walked to the cinder-block wall at the edge of my backyard. From this vantage point, perched atop a hill overlooking the elementary school below, we could see across the entire city - one of the benefits of living in the Northeast Heights.
At first, we thought the object was a helicopter, but our minds quickly changed when we realized it did not behave or sound like one. Typically, any aircraft flying over the city would produce noticeable noise, even from afar. However, this object made no sound whatsoever. The acoustics of the Rio Grande valley, where Albuquerque is located, usually amplify and reverberate sounds through the thin air and off the Sandia Mountains.
My friend's dad, who was watering his lawn nearby, inquired about what we were doing. We pointed out the bright light in the sky, which perplexed him. He remarked that in all his years living in the Southwest, he had never seen a star that large and luminous. Though intrigued, he did not linger with us once his watering was complete. My mother then came outside, noticed the group discussion, and joined us. Like my friend's dad, she was interested in the unusual phenomena, even offering some speculation, but eventually returned indoors.
Transfixed, we stared at the mysterious object for some time before I recalled my father's old army binoculars in the garage. Racing to retrieve them, I trained the lenses on the anomaly. Upon closer inspection, it became clear this was no helicopter or planet - instead, a honeycomb of smaller, luminous points. Handing the binoculars to my friend, his profanity-laced reaction confirmed we were both seeing the same strange phenomenon.
Intrigued at first, we studied the mysterious object for a while. But like typical restless teenagers, our attention soon wandered, and we grew bored watching something that simply sat motionless (even if it had come from another world). Retreating to our homes, I later decided to venture back outside, curious to see if the celestial visitor remained. To my surprise, the object had vanished. Of course, I thought ruefully, it had to disappear the moment I turned away.
That giant green light in the sky over Albuquerque caught the attention of many. Local media, police, TV stations, the Albuquerque Journal, and even the nearby Kirtland Air Force Base received calls about the phenomenon. An expert soon stepped forward to provide an official explanation - the light was from the planet Jupiter. While some accepted this, my friend and I remained skeptical. Our alternative theory would be vindicated just a few days later.
The strange, glowing green object returned, but this time it hovered over a different part of the city. When we next spotted it, the light was suspended above Kirtland Air Force Base to the south. This naturally led us to suspect some genuine X-Files-style activity, given its position directly over a military installation. Just as before, it remained there for around an hour before disappearing, leaving my friend and I rather bored. Surprisingly, there was no media coverage of the phenomenon this time - at least, nothing was reported publicly. After that night, we never saw the object(s) again.
In August 1980, there were reports that seem to suggest these unidentified objects were spying on Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque. A photographer who worked for the government and documented top-secret tests at the base claimed to have witnessed a laser weapon capable of destroying boulders, though this could have been an exaggeration. Additionally, there were rumors of a large stockpile of nuclear warheads stored in the nearby Sandia Mountains, which the government may have wanted to keep secret from the half-million people living in the area.
On August 9, 1980 at 0020 MST, a Sandia security guard was conducting a routine building check on an alarmed structure along the Coyote Canyon access road. As he approached the structure, he noticed a bright light near the ground behind it. Upon closer inspection, he initially thought the object was a helicopter, but then realized it was actually a round, disk-shaped object. When the guard tried to radio for backup, he found his radio was not working. He then approached the object on foot, armed with a shotgun. At that point, the object rapidly took off in a vertical direction at high speed.
On August 22, 1980, three unnamed security guards observed a light over Coyote Canyon that behaved similarly to the one sighted on August 8th. Coyote Canyon is part of a large, restricted test range used by the Air Force Weapons Laboratory and Sandia Laboratories.
While conducting research, I discovered several historical reports of green, glowing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) spotted in the skies over New Mexico dating back to the late 1940s. On February 29, 1949, the Los Alamos, New Mexico Skyliner newspaper published an article referring to these phenomena as "flying saucers" and hinting at a possible conspiracy surrounding them.
"Los Alamos now has flying green lights. These will ‘o wisps seen generally about 2 a.m., have alerted the local constabulary and their presence is being talked about in Santa Fe bars. But local wheels deny any official knowledge of the sky phenomena. Each one passes the buck to another. Have you seen a green light lately?”The multiple sightings of "flying green lights" in New Mexico in 1948 and beyond were a significant chapter in UFO history precisely because there were numerous reported incidents. In fact, so many people had witnessed these phenomena that TIME magazine published a piece called "Great Balls of Fire" on the subject in November 1951.
The sightings were deeply unsettling, particularly for the United States government. They were concentrated around the sensitive Los Alamos and Sandia atomic weapons laboratories, as well as other military installations like radar stations and fighter bases. This meant the fireballs were witnessed by trained professionals - pilots, scientists, and intelligence officers - leading many to suspect the objects were Soviet spy devices.
Government investigators officially concluded that the mysterious green fireballs were a previously unobserved natural phenomenon. However, interest and research into the fireballs waned with the outbreak of the Korean War.
The elusive truth is waiting to be discovered, my fellow seekers.
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