The Jimmy Carter UFO Incident Traditional Cache
Hidden : 10/22/2008
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:

A quart jar.

One evening in 1969, two years before he became governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter was preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting in Leary, Georgia. At about 7:15 p.m (EST), one of the guests called his attention to a strange object that was visible about 30 degrees above the horizon to the west of where he was standing. Carter described the object as being bright white and as being about as bright as the moon. It was said to have appeared to have closed in on where he was standing but to have stopped beyond a stand of pine trees some distance from him. The object is then said to have changed color, first to blue, then to red, then back to white, before appearing to recede into the distance.

Carter felt that the object was self-luminous, but not a solid in nature. Carter's report indicates that it was witnessed by about ten or twelve other people, and was in view for ten to twelve minutes before it passed out of sight.

In 1973 Carter said, "There were about twenty of us standing outside of a little restaurant, I believe, a high school lunch room, and a kind of green light appeared in the western sky. This was right after sundown. It got brighter and brighter. And then it eventually disappeared. It didn't have any solid substance to it, it was just a very peculiar-looking light. None of us could understand what it was."

Also in 1973, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a report on his 1969 UFO sighting with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. However, in 2007, Carter stated that he did not "remember" why he filed the report and that he believes he probably only did it at the request of one of his children.

Speaking in a 2005 interview, Carter stated, "All of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, 'Look, over in the west!' And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don’t know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance."

According to an investigation carried out in 1976, some seven years after the event, most of those present at the meeting either did not recall the event, or did not recall it as being anything important. According to Fred Hart, the only guest contacted whom remembered seeing the object, "It seems like there was a little - like a blue light or something or other in the sky that night — like some kind of weather balloon they send out or something ... it had been pretty far back in my mind."

While puzzled by the object and its origins Carter, himself, later said that while had considered the object to be a UFO, on the grounds it was unexplaine, his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft.

On January 6, 1969 the sky was clear in Leary and the planet Venus was near its maximum brightness and in the direction described by Carter. Ufologist Robert Sheaffer concluded that the object that Carter witnessed was a misidentification of Venus. This could also be Venus "Halo", as was discussed on the podcast "Skeptics' Guide To The Universe", in an interview with Jimmy Carter. In the interview Carter stated that he did not believe the object was Venus, explaining that he was an amateur astronomer and knew what Venus looked like.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Vg'f bayl Irahf

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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