A retired Air Force major from Medford is meeting today with two witnesses, including a police lieutenant, who witnessed a strange light show over Carteret early Sunday morning.
George Filer, who is also the eastern regional director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), is heading up a team of researchers from across the country as they investigate the strange phenomena.
"It sounds like a real UFO to me," Filer said. "We'll see what the witnesses have to say."
Carteret Police Lt. Daniel Tarrant, who Filer is interviewing today, was able to describe what he saw in great detail.
"I observed 16 yellow/orange lights flying in a V-type formation," said Tarrant, who was off-duty at 12:30 a.m. when he saw the lights. "They were slowly drifting apart and burning off. By the time it left my line of sight, there were only three left."
He said each light seemed to be several hundred feet across.
"It was very high up, probably moving a few hundred miles per hour," Tarrant said. "There was no noise, no sound."
He later discovered his police station received 15 calls about the sighting that night, and other local police reported at least 75 cars traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike stopped on the side of the road to marvel at the sky.
John Haggerty, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Police, would not comment on the phenomena, and would only say that his office had "heard" about the lights and the cars stopped on the Turnpike.
"There were no accidents, no back-ups," Haggerty said.
Along with the state police, the National Weather Service, Newark Airport and McGuire Air Force Base personnel had no explanations, educated guesses, or comments concerning the lights.
In addition to the Carteret police officer, at least two dozen other people have stepped forward, including the Rev. Taras Chubenko of the Demetrius Ukranian Orthodox Cathedral.
"The lights were giving off, well, they were birthing," he said. "It looked like wax drippings. After part of the light would drip, the whole light would go off."
He said the lights diminished over the 10 minutes he witnessed the spectacle.
"The entire movement was in unison, as if it was connected," Chubenko said.
He guessed that the object was at least 500 yards across, and approximately 3000-5000 feet high up.
Chubenko may be uniquely qualified at those guesses, as he is a licensed pilot.
And as for what exactly he saw, Chubenko didn't rule anything out.
"One could philosophize over what it was," he said. "But it doesn't diminish my faith or beliefs. There's nothing in my religious beliefs that says whether or not aliens exist."
Tarrant, however, doesn't believe for a second that anything alien was involved.
"It was either a hoax or space debris," he said. "As far as we're concerned, the case is closed."
But the case is just opening up for UFO trackers, including Filer.
Filer is a devout believer in UFO's, ever since the day in 1962, when flying for the Air Force over England, he picked something up over his radar.
"I got a call from London control," he recalled. "They told me there was an unidentified flying object, and I chased it. It was the size of a large bridge. Consequently, I've had an interest since then. I'm convinced, as much as I see cars driving by me in Medford, that UFO's are real and they exist."
Peter Davenport, the director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, is working with Filer.
Davenport is not as quick to assume the lights in the sky were a UFO, but he said he was able to dismiss one notion: What people saw was not space debris.
"All the reports we have received have the witnesses within 5 to 10 miles of each other," he said. "When space debris comes back, it could be seen for hundreds of miles around, and for a much shorter duration."
He also mentioned that similar events took place in Prescott, Ariz., on Feb. 6, 2000, and in Rockford, Ill., a few days later and then numerous times since then.
Davenport said it could take months before he feels confident to file a report on the light show in Carteret.
"It's a very interesting event, in our opinion," he said. "There are a number of possibilities of what it could've been. We'll rule them out one by one."
MUFONs George Filer
Investigating Carteret, NJ UFO Event[Original headline: STRANGE LIGHT SHOW]
At least 75 cars pulled over on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike to look at the unexplained phenomenon in the sky over Carteret on Sunday.
The Trentonian, Trenton / NJ | Jeff Edelstein - July 18 2001
New Jersey Mystified by UFO Sighting 
