By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
For the first time since before Covid, the Westwood Historical Society (WHS) hosted a thrilling event just in time for the Halloween season. On Tuesday, October 10th, Historian/Pro-Sports Announcer, John Horrigan, presented on the History of UFOs from the 1880s through the 1990s.
As nighttime fell, crowds filled the WHS, eager to hear about these exciting yet strange UFO sightings. Horrigan has a long and very impressive resume, ranging from books, television shows, sports broadcastings, an array of different awards, and ofcourse, paranormal research.
He began his first initial research back in 1992 and has lectured on topics dealing with these unexplained mysteries at Boston Public Library since 1994. While he is extremely knowledgeable about this subject, Horrigan completely understands that there may be some in the audience who know more about the subject or thinks that they do, so he gladly welcomes personal recollections and conversions at the end of each presentation that he shares.
Within the one hundred year time frame of the 1880s through the 1980s, Horrigan covered many of the classic UFO encounters that were, and still are, quite popular. Included within these classic encounters were some very close to home, happening within New Hampshire and even our neighbors in Dover, Massachusetts.
More specifically, in 1870, the “oldest UFO photograph ever taken” happened within Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. What made this photo most believable was that, during that time, it would have been extremely difficult to manipulate any given photo and there were no flying objects either, at least not from this world. As for our neighbors in Dover, the famous Dover Demon was first seen on April 21st, 1977 by teenager William Bartlett.
Not only was this presentation in perfect timing for the Halloween season, but also because the government recently came out saying that UFOs/Aliens exist in our world today. This was definitely mentioned within Horrigan’s discussion as he laughingly stated, “In 1947, the U.S. Government claimed a UFO in Roswell was a balloon. In 2023, the U.S. Government claimed that a balloon over America was a UFO.”
Before Horrigan could really go in detail about any of these UFO sightings, he first had to explain what exactly this acronym stands for. He stated, “The term UFO was coined in 1953 by the USAF, an unidentified flying object is an object perceived in the sky that is not readily identified. This term is widely used for claimed observations for extraterrestrial crafts. When multiple witnesses in several different areas report the phenomena during the same time period, it is sometimes called a ‘wave’ or a ‘flap.’ It is interesting to point out that between 5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense.”
No matter if you were a skeptic or not, Horrigan presented some incredible evidence and information about these very interesting sightings. For more information about the work that Horrigan has done, please visit his website at www.johnhorrigan.com.
As for the Westwood Historical Society, they have some more exciting events coming up now that they are back in full swing! Please visit their Facebook page for more information.
