Part 1 - Ted Phillips Photographs Mysterious "Dover Lights"

 

© 2004 by Linda Moulton Howe

 

 

The Piney River valley - ten miles north of Dover, Arkansas, and northeast of Fort Smith - has a long
tradition of mysterious moving lights and green fog. Local residents call them the "Dover lights."

April 29, 2004  Branson, Missouri - At the 2004 Eureka Springs, Arkansas UFO Conference three weeks ago, we heard new reports about mysterious glowing objects down in the Piney River valley that local residents since at least the 1800s have called "Dover lights." This year at the conference, Ted Phillips, Director of the Center for Physical Trace Research in Branson, Missouri, talked about his own recent encounter with the Dover lights on March 26, 2004, at "twenty minutes past sunset," or about 6 p.m. Central time. In Eureka Springs, Ted showed a series of color photographs as the lights appeared and changed patterns for a half hour, starting with one moving.

Interview:

Ted Phillips, Director, Center for Physical Trace Research, Branson, Missouri: "When the sun set behind the mountain, the valley became pretty dusky in a hurry. But you could still see the water surface of the river and suddenly, this very odd colored light just winked on. It moved rapidly to the right and covered a distance. I was later able to determine from the maps and photos that these things were about 4,700 feet from me near the bank of the river which was 25 to 30 degrees below the horizon.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'ODD COLORED'?

The shade of red or violet. It is very difficult to describe. I've had a lot of UFO witnesses say this to me, too. I have never seen a color like this and it is extremely odd in that it is a mixture of deep red and deep violet. The light source is very intense, but yet it is not hurtful to the eyes. It's almost a 'soft intense,' if that is possible.

In a standard color wheel, red and violet
are next to each other on the left.

It does not illuminate the area around it (does not cast shadows). This thing was passing through trees, very low to the ground, at a really good clip. I have talked to another researcher who has been down there on foot and he tells me that it is almost vertical bluffs, very dense trees, so you wouldn't just go running across there with a light of some kind, or driving something. There are no roads or trails down there along the Piney River.

The first light winked on and moved rapidly across to the right about 100 feet. Suddenly, it stops and maintains position there and about 20 to 30 feet to its right, another light winks on. They are displaying two horizontally level lights parallel to each other. Then below them, near the ground, a third light comes on which creates a sort of triangle (pattern with the other two lights).

I was shooting with a 35mm single reflex camera and 260 millimeter telephoto on a tripod, using Fuji 800 ASA film. I started out running a 2 second exposure per frame. Then I wasn't too sure of the lighting down there (since it was so dark) and I wanted to bring up some of the ground details so I could then later determine the exact position of the lights. So, I exposed some frames 4 seconds, then some 6 seconds, and then some 8 seconds.

THE COLOR OF THE LIGHTS IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS, IS IT CLOSE TO WHAT YOU SAW WITH YOUR EYE?

No. No. And I've been a professional photographer for a good part of my life, most of it. I'm not sure how you would duplicate that color, but I tried in printing those and shifting the colors on some test images to duplicate it and as of now, I haven't been able to come up with the precise shade. I don't know. I've just not seen that color before. The violet part is what is really outstanding in my mind. It's such an odd variation of red and violet. I don't know.

Ted Phillip's first photograph of the bright light he saw "wink on." Behind, there seem to be
two other lights coming up from behind. White reflection on river water below.
March 26, 2004 photographs © 2004 by Ted Phillips.

Three lights form a half circle, or triangular, pattern.

In far right corner is a light that traveled from the first half circle's edge.

Subsequently over a period of two minutes, additional lights came on which are visible in my images which form almost a rough, fairly large half circle of lights. From this half circle, the edge of the circle, there would be up to 5 or 6 lights ­ the camera was seeing better than I was. Several of these lights would come out of the half circle at the edge of it, again to the right maybe 100 to 150 feet, and stop.

Several lights to the right of the first half circle appear to be moving upward.

In some of the images, you can see some of the objects or lights going, ascending vertically. I'm not sure how far they went because the shutter shut down before they had stopped. But they were leaving a luminous trail behind them in the vertical ascent. So, there was vertical and horizontal action on the part of these things. Gosh, the whole display went on for almost 30 minutes and there was a rather brutal thunderstorm coming in over the mountain. I packed up my tent and fled.

Blow-up of the ascending lights leaving vertical trails.

Future Research

A small team of us are going back with better imaging equipment and radios so half the team can be down in the lower valley and half at the over-look.

LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS, I KEPT HAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT MAYBE THERE WAS SOMETHING THERE INVISIBLE AND THAT THESE LIGHTS WERE APPEARING AROUND IT?

Well, that's an interesting point because I do know that the first one moved in from the left to the right and when it stopped, Light 2 and Light 3 came on, followed by the other series of lights. So, if that were the case, then the first light came in independently to join with this circle of lights which was initiated and displayed itself. Then the other lights that were coming out and moving 100 to 150 feet away from the circle were independent once they left the circle, independent light sources. They were all the same color, the same intensity. They didn't blink, they didn't dim, they didn't brighten. But the color in the display of the light was very unusual and nothing at all ­ for example, the Joplin spook light which I have photographed many times and a couple of the other spook lights that I have seen. They are of a much softer lighting, illumination, then these things (at Dover). These were so intense ­ almost with the intensity of looking into a laser point, really. If someone was standing a few feet away and turned a laser point at you, it would be almost that intense.

What I will be using when I go back will be a 4000 millimeter with an astronomical CCD imaging device which is capable of rapid multiple exposures that show more detail."

At the Eureka Springs, Arkansas conference, Ted Phillips also reported about his search for a large, black, glassy object embedded deep inside a cave in Slovakia - a mystery that began in 1970 when he worked with astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who founded the Center for UFO Studies and consulted with the U. S. Air Force on Project Blue Book.

Continued in Part 2 - Ted Phillips Investigates Slovakia Cave Mystery

Websites:

http://www.cptr.us/