Frame by Frame: Unwelcome Visits (Abilene Online, 2-29-2008)

From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project

Frame by Frame: Unwelcome Visits

By Ronald Erdrich

In early January, Ricky Sorrells saw something he couldn't explain. Nothing could have prepared him for it -- or how his life was going to change.

Sorrells saw a UFO.

Quiet and down-to-earth, Sorrells is a machinist who lives about three miles outside of Dublin on about 16 acres with his wife and children.

The event that changed his life began, innocently enough, with a simple desire for a peaceful afternoon of hunting.

Sorrells was easing through a stand of trees some distance behind his home. Between the dead leaves crunching underfoot and the briers brushing up against his legs, he realized he wasn't being as stealthy as he could.

He slowed for a moment and, casually glancing upward, continued on -- and then froze in his tracks.

"I took a step or two, and then I realized what my eyes had seen," he said. "I look back up, and there it is. It's covered the sky; it's covered as far as you can see ... as far as you can see to the left and to the right and out in front."

While he said he didn't panic, his mind raced with questions.

"Do I need to turn and run? Do I need to be scared? Do I need to shoot at it? What do I need to do here? I thought, 'OK, calm down, study it, that's the best thing you can do.' But at the time you're just not prepared for it."

He remembered his rifle and, lifting it up, looked at the object through the scope. He didn't see anything that resembled rivets, seams or welds. The only distinct characteristic were cone-like protrusions on the bottom that he surmised had something to do with keeping it airborne, and a subtle wavering in the atmosphere beneath it, like heat rising off pavement in the summertime. Other than woodland noises, the scene was quiet.

"I know everybody asks, 'Man, what was it, was it a square or a rectangle or a dish?' I didn't know, and the reason was, I had walked right up underneath it."

The object lingered for a moment, and then quickly took off to the north, though it didn't seem to disturb the air when it did so. The entire encounter probably only lasted a minute.

Sorrells soon learned he wasn't the only person to see the object. After his name appeared in an Associated Press story, he began receiving calls from across the country. In the space of two days, he estimated his telephone rang 700 times for interview requests. Eventually he got tired of answering the phone, but not before receiving a call from man describing himself as a military officer. As it turned out, Sorrells' UFO may have been the least strange thing to happen to him in the weeks following.

"He told me his name and then he said he was a lieutenant colonel with the Air Force -- I think it was the Air Force; I'm pretty sure it was. After I heard all that, I started listening," he said, adding that he had not caught the man's name the first time and wanted to back up and ask him again. But before he could, the conversation took a turn for the worse.

The man said he wanted to come interview him, to which Sorrells replied he wasn't doing any more interviews, causing the man to became angry and demanding.

Sorrells had already experienced one trespasser. Now, feeling threatened, Sorrells told the caller if he crossed his cattle guard, he would shoot him.

"You know, I don't want to shoot nobody. I wouldn't just shoot somebody for just crossing the cattle guard. But trying to come in my house, hurt my family? Yeah," he said.

The threat didn't seem to faze the caller, however.

"Once I told him that, he told me he had the same caliber gun as I did -- but a whole bunch more of them -- and he would do what he wanted to. That threw me for a loop, and so I'm trying to think, and I said, 'I wish you'd stop flying those helicopters over my airspace.' And that's when he told me it wasn't my airspace, it was his."

Since the incident, Sorrells said aircraft began making regular appearances over his property, searching for something. One morning, he said, three small helicopters, accompanied by a larger one, roused him out of bed. He got up, put on his boots, went outside to his pickup and let his displeasure be known by shining his spotlight on one of the aircraft. The pilot shielded his eyes, the helicopters then slowed down, turned and surrounded him, hovering.

"So I'm here in my underwear and my boots, with a spotlight at two o'clock in the morning, and I'm thinking, 'This isn't smart.' I turn off my spotlight, I wave at them, and I get in my house. The next morning my pickup door is still open with my spotlight on the ground."

Sorrells never heard back from his caller and admits the man may not have been what he claimed to be. But Sorrells also notes the helicopter flybys did cease.

The fact that others in the area have come forth with their own UFO stories has taken the heat off Sorrells. But more than anything, Sorrells is ready for his life to get back to normal and wants to put the experience behind him. That might be a tall order -- he has seen something he can't identify at least six times since. Others continue to see it and have created a Web site called StephenvilleLights.com, which is updated and maintained by Angelia Joiner.

"I wish I hadn't seen it, actually. My life would have been easier. I think there's more to it, but I still haven't had time to put it all together in my head. ... All I wanted was to go deer hunting."