By Ivan Van Mieghem for the X-Factor foundation
On a cold Wednesday evening 29 Nov. 1989 in Belgium, numerous UFO sightings of triangular crafts reached the authorities. In fact this was the prelude of what we now call the Belgian UFO wave 1989-90. We have studied thousands of sightings from normal and mostly honest citizens. One of the most famous sightings was made by two police officers which had a close encounter of the second kind. It got confirmed by the Belgian Air force radar, and F-16 radar lock images. At this time in history critics suggested that it were test flights of the then top secret F-117 stealth fighter. Though the flight patterns did not match those of the F-117 we now know. A F-117 is not as big as a football field and it cannot hover, also it makes noise. I will not even mention the craft's flying speed since this is hard to establish for non trained individuals and always is relative.
Although the sighting of the police officers made the world press (remember the "Unsolved Mysteries" show about this incident) they even rated it higher then the Kenneth Arnold sighting on 24 Jun. 1947 . Now I believe that the "Schriek" incident is just so important. And whom has heard about this one?
One of the most remarkable UFO incidents we have investigated surely must be the "Schriek" incident. We realized instantly that this was one of the rarest UFO sightings ever reported to our organization, so we sent a very experienced investigator on this case. She had done doctoral studies in psychology and had lots of experience with trauma victims. Most of all she was the best UFO investigator we had.
It happened to a very harmonic five members counting family: the two parents, their seven years young son, and two twins of four and a half years (a boy and a girl ), their identity cannot been made public without their consent as they did request this mostly to protect the privacy of the children involved.
After a visit to relatives in Tremerlo-the birth place of father Damian- the family goes on their way home. The days date is Saturday 24 March 1990 , the last day in the Central European Wintertime. At midnight the clocks have to be turned one hour forwards. The careful family has turned their clock already one hour forwards making sure they know the exact time when they wake up the following morning. The result of this is that we know for 100% sure that they had synchronized their watches on 21h05 when they left their relatives at Tremerlo. After driving for some ten minutes they are driving over a small and totally empty country road located at the "Schriek" county (this is in the Antwerp province area called "de Kempen," a large, flat open country side with some trees, the nearest small town is Heist-Op-den-Berg.) At this point the seven year old son points his mother to an unusual light in the sky. The mother describes it as a very clear star surrounded by several lights. She tells it to the father. He acts upon it by parking his car (an Audi 80 ) at the side of the road. He looks out of his left car window and he sees as he called it "many enormous lights "hovering 100 meters above his car.
It was hovering above a bunch of trees lighting the treetops. His first impression at this time was the absolute silence, no engine sounds ? nothing. The mother was looking through the windshield and was looking to ten orange lights slightly above main lights twinkling in a certain pattern. It looked to her as lights coming from an airplane cabin window. She was beginning to feel extremely sleepy and had no energy left to leave the car. Suddenly she felt her seven year old son?s head resting on her shoulder. The twins were fast asleep. The father steps into the car and they drove home.
Upon their arrival they looked at their watches and they saw it was 23h20 . They made this trip regularly and it never took them longer then a one hour drive. Now they had made it in about 2 h 15 minutes. They have about 1 hour missing time they could not explain. According to the father he just parked his car looked at the lights, stepped back in and drove home. he found his wife and kids asleep while driving home .? There must have passed only a minute or two since I had stopped the car, looked at the lights and drove on" he said. The mother could not remember a thing just after the incident.
Now remember this happened during the UFO wave. The media were full of UFO sightings and that why after a week they reported this incident to the authorities and so landed on our desk. We never were able to establish what did happen during the missing time. The family refused hypnotic regression on religious grounds. Our investigator made a detailed report and submitted it to professor Mack then at the department of psychology in Harvard. He came to the same conclusion as our investigator. Their experience was real and sincere and the family was suffering of a light traumatic shock.
We contacted the Royal Meteorological Institute at Ukkel (Brussels) . They could confirm that there was no astronomical phenomena that evening. We contacted the Belgian Air force, they confirmed that no military exercise or maneuvers took place at that area or time. Also we contacted the Belgian Air Traffic control center, they did confirm that no known flight trajectory was planned at that location date and time.
A few years passed and we again got contacted by the family. Could we come over? We did and they showed us drawings from the twins. Remember they were fast asleep. "Its really getting a problem? the mother said. The twins were making drawings of beings, telling their friends how they flew above the ground in a "flying saucer" and making contact with gray like alien beings. They had to go into therapy and psychologists said it was caused by stress, changing schools. We on the other hand think something completely different has caused this behavior.
Of course we will follow up on this and maybe when the kids come to the adult age they will decide to have hypnotic regression and all will become clearly.
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