There Are Strange Things Over Kansas City (So Why Don't More People See Them?)

There are things in the sky – unidentified things. Some hovering, some flying, some triangular, some round.

The Mutual UFO Network takes hundreds of reports of UFOs each month. But maybe the strange part of these reports isn’t the people who see Unidentified Flying Objects; it’s the people who don’t see them.

Janice Vaughan of Des Moines, Iowa, was a Kansas City, Mo., teenager in 1986 when she and her mother were driving to the mall.

“We stopped at a red light,” Vaughan said. “Glancing out my window on the passenger side, I saw a huge silver disc with lights rotating around the middle hovering above the building on the northwest corner of Antioch and Englewood Road.”

The disc dwarfed the buildings at this busy intersection. It just hung there silently.

“I said something like, ‘Mom, look,’” she said. “We were both stunned by what we were seeing.”

While they watched, the object glided silently over the road and briefly hovered over a movie theater.

“Then it whooshed off to the west and disappeared from our sight behind some houses,” Vaughan said. “We turned right onto Englewood Road, abandoning our original errand, and drove around the neighborhoods hoping to see it again, but we didn’t find it.”

Then Vaughan and her mother drove home.

“We told my step-dad about it and watched the news that night for any mention of it,” she said.

But there were no news reports on the UFO that night or in the newspaper the next day. Vaughan doesn’t understand how no one else saw the object, but she knows she did.

“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “If my mom hadn’t been with me I think I would have convinced myself by now that it didn’t really happen. Once in a while my mom and I will talk about it again, and I’ll ask her to tell me what she remembers about that day, just to verify my memories of it.”

Jim Johnson, Kansas City Section Director for the Mutual UFO Network said this type of sighting – a singular witness over a busy area – is all too common.

“Many of the reports I have received over the last decade-and-a-half with MUFON are from high-traffic areas,” Johnson said. “I was able to get to one of the scenes within an hour or so of the sighting event.”

The witness of this 1997 event, Johnson said, was convincing.

“Whatever she saw, she wasn’t making it up,” Johnson said. “(She) took me back to the locations where she turned off at Southwest Trafficway at 34th Street (another busy intersection) traveling north.”

The oblong object, roughly shaped like a rugby ball, moved slowly over a television tower then toward a second television tower about a mile away before it “blinked out.”

“It lasted a couple minutes,” Johnson said. “Her impression was that others were seeing it as well, as cars were slowing down and pulling to the right lane, but she was the only one who stopped.”

Like the other UFO sighting, there were no news reports about it the next day. So, why is it no one else saw these UFOs moving slowly over busy streets in the middle of the day?

“I have come to believe that in many cases, the people who are supposed to see flying objects, see them repeatedly, and the rest of us see them rarely, if at all,” Johnson said. “Keep in mind that most people aren’t looking for them and don’t want to get involved even if they do see them. The rest of us keep looking up.”


Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.