Unidentified Flying Objects
In 1952, Navy officer Delbert Newhouse was driving cross-country with his family, a trip that took them through northern Utah the morning of July 2.
Around 11 a.m., Newhouse's wife reportedly noticed odd figures in the sky a few miles outside Tremonton. Grabbing his movie camera, Newhouse ended up with some striking images of the unidentified flying objects - images that persuaded the U.S. Air Force, Navy and the Central Intelligence Agency to investigate.
The government eventually concluded the "Tremonton tapes" simply showed some seagulls in flight.
The Tremonton episode is one story in a long line of alleged extraterrestrial activity in Utah. It's one reason independent UFO researcher and lecturer Robert Hastings will make his fourth trip to the state Wednesday for a lecture at the University of Utah.
Of the Tremonton tapes, Hastings said: "If one looks, using modern, computer-based visual-enhancement technologies, those seagulls essentially were saucer-shaped. They were round, oval-shaped or disc-shaped, so clearly they weren't seagulls.
"That's one example of countless ones where the PR guys at the Pentagon have tried to explain away UFOs."
UFOs, extraterrestrials and all manner of unexplained phenomena are always the subject of uneasy debate between believers and nonbelievers, government agents and private citizens. And UFOs are fodder for pop-culture fantasies, whether through sci-fi flicks of the 1950s or "The X-Files," a TV show in the '90s that rekindled talk that "The Truth Is Out There."