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The McMinnville Photos

X. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS

Apparently no reporters followed up on the Trent story after the visit by Lou Gillette on June 10 or 11, 1950. Since there were, at that time, no civilian UFO organizations, there were no further civilian investigations into the sighting until many years later. However, the Trents have claimed that there was a brief government investigation, and that claim is backed in part by Bill Powell. The first mention of a government investigation in a written document (at least the first mention that I was able to find) is in a letter from the late Frank Halstead (an astronomer) to Maj. Donald Keyhoe (a retired Marine pilot,  author of the first popular UFO book and several other UFO books and the first director the civilian UFO organization called the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)).  (NOTE 2000:  NICAP ceased operation in 1980 and the voluminous files of about 10,000 sighting cases were turned over to the Center for UFO Studies.)  The letter of April 18, 1959 states that Halstead visited the Trents and "I spent about an hour with them and they told me that the FBI came there and questioned them for several hours and some time later a man from the A.F. base from Denver, Colorado... This man spent a considerable time with them asking, but did answer their questions." Halstead also offered to make a tape recording of the Trents' story. Richard Hall, who was the executive secretary of NICAP at the time, responded to Halstead's letter, saying that NICAP  would be very interested in getting a tape recording and "as a separate section of the tape, a description of the interviews the Trents had with the two FBI agents and the Air Force officer."(39)   I don't know why Hall referred to "two" FBI agents since there is no written record of Halstead referring to two agents. Perhaps Halstead telephoned Keyhoe (or Hall) in relation to the interview and conveyed further information that way. (Note: apparently Halstead never did tape the Trents. As late as May, 1961 Halstead informed Keyhoe by letter that he still intended to tape an interview with the Trents, but there is no such tape in the NICAP files.)

The next mention of possible government involvement occurs in two sources in 1967. Mrs. Trent told Look Magazine that "Air Force officials investigated the sighting and took geiger counter readings but they didn't let us know anything." (40)  The second source is the Portland Oregonian of Aug. 3, 1967 which says that Mrs. Trent reported that" 'two detectives' examined their house and furnishings after they reported the pictures. She didn't know why." (41)

In a 1969 phone conversation with Dr. James McDonald, Paul Trent was asked "what he thought it was" and he replied as follows: "Thought it was something the Army was experimenting with. Don't say much about it now... because get so much fuss. FBI checked (us); came right out to where (I) was working and questioned (me). That was right at (the) time, 1950, three weeks after it got out in the papers. (They) gave no reason. (They were) just talking to (me) but (they) showed FBI identification (papers)." (Reconstructed from telephone notes by James McDonald (24).)

In several conversations with me, Mrs. Trent recounted the story of "detectives" who visited the house while she was home. I asked her "Was that during the day when you were home or something?"(42) She answered "Yeah, it was later in the day. I don't know, it was probably about 4:00, say to 4:30 when he came in. Yeah, he went through everything. _Everything!_  (her emphasis) And I don't mean maybe!  He never stopped (until he had everything spread out) on the table."

I asked her if the man said where he was from and she answered "No. He even went where to where my husband was at work, on the Alderman farm there. He asked all different questions there." Mrs. Trent gave a rather graphic description of how the "detective" went through the dresser drawers and other drawers in the house looking for something and generally making a mess of the place and they didn't put anything back where it was supposed to be. She said she wasn't sure that the detective was from the FBI. She also said that there was another man, too, who spent some time outside the house as well as inside. Both men took lots of pictures. They were "throwing stuff up in the air 'n' taking pictures, 'n' trying all different things like that, too, garbage can lids 'n' stuff like that, but they went all through it just to see what they could find, I guess. They didn't find nothin', but that's what they said they had (to do), said it was their job, that's the way they worded it." Mrs. Trent did not recall whether or not they wore uniforms.

Although I have not been able, to find any documents associated with an on-the-spot investigation by the Air Force, it would not be too difficult to imagine that one or more agents of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI; basically a criminal investigative unit of the Air Force) did investigate the Trent sighting. During the period 1949-1951 the AFOSI was the agency charged with on-site UFO investigations on behalf Project Grudge (headquartered at Wright -Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio; Grudge followed Project Sign and preceded the better known Project Blue Book ). There are no documents on the Trent case in the files of Project Blue Book itself (which include the files of Sign and Grudge; these files are all at the National Archives) other than responses to letters written in the mid 1960's for information on the case. Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla, Jr., who was in charge of Project Blue Book in the mid 1960's,  wrote to P. Klass in 1969 (44) "the Air Force never officially got involved in the analysis of this case. We don't even have a good print of the alleged vehicle." Actually, Project Blue Book must have had at least one print in 1966 because at that time Quintanilla requested an analysis of the photographs by the photo analysis branch. The photo analysis branch did not provide an analysis, however.

Despite Quintanilla's answer to Klass, it is not impossible that the AFOSI investigated the sighting in 1950 and did not file a report with Project Grudge. A study of the microfilm record at the National Archives (45) has shown that not all of the files of the AFOSI were entered into the Grudge or Blue Book records. In particular, on roll 91 of the microfilm records (45) there is an AFOSI document entitled "Spot Intelligence Report" which discusses the "Flying Saucer Photograph (taken by ) Trent (of ) McMinnville, Oregon ". The spot intelligence report was filed in the records of the 19th AFOSI district office and a copy was sent to AFOSI headquarters in Washington, D.C., but no copy was sent to Project Grudge. (Therefore Quintanilla was not aware of it because it was not in the Grudge/Blue Book file of reports.) The date on the spot report is June 21, 1950. Apparently an agent of the AFOSI saw a newspaper article in the Vallejo (California) NewsChronical of that date. The newspaper article, which was included in the spot report, featured the Trent photos along with a very brief summary of the sighting. The text of the spot intelligence report says that " Sgt. Lawrence J. Hyder", of the 1704th Air Traffic Squadron, Fairfield-Suisan Air Force Base in California, "advised this District that (Mr. Trent) and all the Trents are known to residents of McMinnville, Oregon as being substantial, solid, honest citizens of the community. Hyder said that while he was home on leave, approximately June 8, his home town paper, the 'Telephone Register' published these photographs on the front page with the story that Trent said the 'Saucer' was shining silver, made no noise or smoke, and shortly afterward disappeared over the horizon to the Northwest." There is no specific indication that the AFOSI took any action as a result of this report by Sgt. Hyder. However, I should point out that June 21 was almost three weeks after the photos had been published and that Mr. Trent told J. McDonald (in 1969) that the "FBI'.' men came "right out to where (I) was working and questioned me, three weeks after it got out in the papers."(24)

An independent statement about government involvement was made by a reliable source, Bill Powell, the newspaperman who originally published the Trent's story. Powell volunteered the information (without any question about it from me) in a phone conversation in 1976. Referring to copy negatives and prints which he had retained  at the newspaper office (the original negatives had, by this time, been "lost" in the files of the INS) Powell said, "Anyway, the damn Air Force latched onto them and I never did get them back." (35) He went on to say that "They sent in a plainclothes (man who) had the paper to do it" about "two weeks to a month after the pictures were published". Note that this time period agrees with Trent's claim that he was visited about three weeks after the pictures were published. Powell said that he wrote registered letters and sent telegrams to the Air Force but never got a response and never got the pictures back. Philip Bladine, the editor, wasn't in McMinnville on the day that Powell published the Trent photos, but he heard about the sighting when he returned. In a letter to P. Klass, Bladine stated that, after the negatives were sent to Life Magazine, "they (Life) claimed the negatives were returned but we never received them." (46) Bladine then stated that he had "always been suspicious that they were confiscated by military people."

The military involvement was echoed, in a somewhat distorted manner, by Frank Edwards in an article published in 1965. (47) In 1950 Edwards was a radio commentator who had an interest in saucer sightings. Shortly after the Trent photos were published he arranged with Bladine to send out free reprints of the first page of the Telephone Register of June 8 (1950) to anyone who wrote for a copy. Edwards announced this offer during a radio program and, according to Bladine, the newspaper received nearly 10,000 requests for copies, and hundreds, or thousands, of letters. Because of Edwards' interest in the Trent sighting and his arrangement with the newspaper, he was in close contact with the newspaper in June of 1950. According to Edwards," the Air Force had picked up all the available prints from the McMinnville Tribune (sic), had 'borrowed' the original negatives from Life and tried and failed to secure the two prints in my possession." (47)

The statement by Powell, backed up by Bladine and Edwards, strongly suggests Air Force involvement between two and four weeks after the pictures were published. On the other hand, Trent claimed that he was visited by FBI men. (Note: Mrs. Trent did refer to the visit of an Air Force Officer who spent quite a long time talking with her, but this was much later than three weeks after the sighting.) In order to confirm or deny the claim that FBI investigators were involved, in the fall of 1976 I filed a request under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. I was informed, in May, 1977, that a search of the files at FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. failed to turn up any information on Mr. Trent. However, from other information in the FBI file on "Flying Discs" I learned that the FBI had been instructed to investigate reports officially during the summer of 1947. The agents had then been instructed to discontinue official investigations, but to pass along any information they might acquire to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.(48)  Nevertheless, agents continued to send "disc" related information to headquarters during the 1950's.  I also learned from agents at FBI headquarters that local FBI offices may carry out investigations and have the option of sending or not sending the results of these investigations to headquarters as the local agents see fit. Thus it is possible that local agents might have investigated the Trents and, having found no evidence of subversive activity (the official FBI investigation of 1947 had been directed toward the discovery of subversive activity), the local agents did not send the results of their investigation to headquarters. I also learned from FBI headquarters that, whereas the main office cannot destroy records (by order of Congress), local offices can destroy records after five or ten years. Thus there would no longer be any evidence of an FBI investigation of the Trents in any FBI files. Thus it is not possible to refute Mr. Trent's claim that he was visited by FBI agents. However, if plainclothes Air Force agents had interviewed the Trents they might have forgotten that they were Air Force agents and thought many years later (e.g., 1959 when questioned by Frank Halstead) that the men had been from the FBI (because they did not wear uniforms).  If the Trents made an error in thinking that they had been visited by the FBI, then their story would agree closely with that of Powell (who said a plainclothes Air Force man visited the newspaper office) and their story would suggest that the report by Sgt. Hyder caused the AFOSI to investigate (although no record of such an investigation has been found). On the other hand, if both the Trents and Powell are correct, both the FBI and the AFOSI were involved.

(NOTE: in the  letter I wrote to the FBI asking for information on the Trents I also included a request for any other UFO related information they might have, under the then-recent rulings of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.  I didn't expect to receive any other information since, as of 1976, there had never been any publicly available references to the FBI investigating UFO sightings.  (In fact, in the 1960's the FBI had specifically denied being ever involved.)  In May, 1977, I received a phone call from the very suprised FBI agent who had handled my request. He told me there were over a thousand pages of material in the "flying disc" file.  Over the next few years about 1,600 pages were released and are now available on the web at the FBI site:  www.foia.fbi.gov/unusual.htm.  Some of the sightings investigated in 1947 by the FBI were filed under "Security Matter - X"...the "real X Files!"  The story of the FBI involvement with UFOs is told in my book  "THE UFO-FBI CONNECTION" published in May, 2000, by the Llewellyn Publishing Co.  The genesis of this book is the FBI documents which were released over 20 years ago as a result of my request.  But I would not have made that request had the Trents not said anything about potential FBI involvement so, in some sense the writing and publication of this book is directly traceable to Paul and Evelyn Trent!)

XI. ON THE POSSIBILITY OF OTHER WITNESSES

According to the brief story in Life Magazine of June 1950 "none of Trent's neighbors saw (the) saucer." (31) No other witnesses were mentioned in the initial newspaper accounts, although the attempt to contact Mr. Trent's mother by telephone was mentioned in the Portland paper (9). The first mention of other witnesses was made by Mr. Trent in a phone conversation with Dr. McDonald. (24) Mr. Trent said that his father saw the object as it was departing toward the west because he and his wife yelled to Trent's father and mother to look. Mrs. Trent told me that she thought her mother-in-law might also have seen it. She also talked about another possible witness whose name was Chapin or Chaplain.  (Mrs. Trent could not remember the name exactly after so many years.)  According to Mrs. Trent (21), Mrs. Chapin, with whom she was not well acquainted, came to her one day after church several weeks (or months) after the photos had been published and said " 'You know that object that you guys saw and took a photo of.....I think I saw the same object that same day you was (sic) talking about'. And then I ( Mrs. Trent) described it to her 'n' she (Mrs. Chapin) said, 'Yes, that's what it looked like. I just thought at first it was just some parachute. After I read that in the paper, I knew good 'n' well that that was the same thing I saw'." Of course, I do not expect that these are the exact words of Mrs. Chapin, recalled by Mrs. Trent after about 26 years. However, Mrs. Trent recalled the story told by Ms. Chapin in a similar way several times over the several years that I talked to her. The description of the object as resembling a parachute may have been an modification of Mrs. Chapin's alleged account. I say this because Mrs. Trent, in conversations with me and also in an original newspaper report, referred to the object as resembling "a good sized parachute canopy without the strings, only silvery bright mixed with bronze."(9) According to Mrs. Trent, Mrs. Chapin died around 1970, so she still would have been alive in 1967 when Hartmann could have interviewed her as part of his investigation. Unfortunately Hartmann never asked about other witnesses.  McDonald asked Mr. Trent about other witnesses in 1969. Mr. Trent mentioned his father. He may not have known (or did not remember) about Mrs. Chapin, since Mrs. Chapin talked to Mrs. Trent. Although McDonald talked to Mrs. Trent as well as to Mr. Trent, there is no evidence that he asked Mrs. Trent about other witnesses. (24) In many conversations spaced over several years Mrs. Trent repeated her. claim about Mrs. Chapin (Chaplain). If she had been making this story up simply for my benefit, to bolster the credibility of the sighting , she must had have a remarkable memory for detailed falsehoods! (21,26,49,50)

XII. OPINIONS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE INTERVIEWED THE TRENTS

Over the years many people have visited the Trents to ask them about their sighting. Others who know the Trents, or who know of the Trents, have offered opinions as to the truthfulness of the Trents. For those readers who have not actually conversed with either of the Trents the following list of people who have talked to the Trents or who know of the them through intermediaries (friends of friends) will be of interest because of the quotable opinions of these people. I have listed these people in chronological order of their interactions with the Trents.

PERSON	DATE AND NATURE OF INVOLVEMENT	OPINION
Bill Powell	June, 1950; wrote the original story and published the photos.	"I think the photos were authentic. The Trents were telling the truth." (35)
Frank Wortmann	June 1950; Trent's banker. He notified Powell about the photos.	Publically vouched for Mr. Trent's veracity; repeated his opinion in letters to McDonald (37) and Klass. (51)
Philip Bladine	June,1950; editor of the paper knew the Trents, Powell, and Wortmann.	Believed the Trents wouldn't fake the photos (5). "We always figured it was legitimate." (53)
L.J.Hyder	June, 1950; Air Force Sergeant who provided information to the AFOSI.	The Trents were known to residents of McMinnville as substantial,solid, honest citizens. (45)
Frank Halstead	April, 1958; retired astronomer who travelled around the country investigating sightings and sending infrmation to NICAP.	After an hour long interview he gained the impression that the Trents were "very sincere people". (38)
William Hartmann	1967; photographic case investigator for the Colorado UFO study ("Condon Report").	From his description in the Condon Report and a statement to McDonald in a phone conversation it is clear that he was impressed with the Trents (1).  However he also made it clear that he could not positively rule out he hoax hypothesis.  He later changed his mind on the veracity of the sighting. (6,54)
James A. McDonald	1969-1970; atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona and independent investigator of UFO sightings.	"I find them to be the kind of people who could scarcely carry off an imaginative hoax or fabrication". (55)
Veikko Itkonen	1969; film producer and director; interviewed and filmed the Trents for a UFO documentary that was shown in Europe.	"The conclusions made by Dr. William K. Hartmann in the Condon Report... are very close to the impressions we got during our visit to McMinnville and meeting with the Trent family". (56)
Arthur Fryer	Dec. 1976; retired high school science teacher in McMinnville who interviewed the Trents at my request.	"No question in my mind that they weren't trying to hoax.  She never called it a flying saucer or UFO". (57)
B. Maccabee	1974-1977; physicist and UFO investigator; had 26 conversations with Mrs. Trent (some short, some long; most transcribed for later analysis).	"I have never detected any tendency to hold back or distort information intentionally; differences in various retellings of the sighting and surrounding events seem to be no more than what one would expect of a person trying to recall events of more than 24 years before.

This list of people who have interviewed one or both of the Trents is doubtless too short. However, these are the people who have made statements that I have on record. Also of interest are the opinions of two independent investigators who analyzed a tape I made of a conversation with Mrs. Trent. The analyses were made by voice stress analysts using equipment constructed by the Dektor corporation. One test was carried out by an employee of a security system company in Los Angeles (name on record (58)). The opinion of the chief examiner was "that the statements given by Mrs Trent to the interviewer on this tape are true to the best of her knowledge."  An independent study of the tape by C. Andrews of the Dektor Corporation led Ms. Andrews to state that there was little or no detectable stress in Mrs. Trent's voice when she answered questions about the sighting, about other alleged witness and about other subjects (59).  Criticisms of voice stress analysis notwithstanding, the apparent lack of stress suggests that, at the very least, Mrs. Trent believes what she is saying. Perhaps if she were a pathological liar she could have avoided stress, but it would seem that at least one of the people who interviewed her personally over the years would have discovered that by getting her to make a statement which could be proven to be untrue.

XIII. DISCUSSION

The Trent photo case is a classic because of its "age" and also because the object is depicted so clearly that it is either a model (hoax) or it is an "extraordinary flying object" (to use Hartmann's phrase). It certainly is neither a bird, nor a plane, nor Superman (i.e., not a misidentified object). This case is also a perfect illustration of the fact that, when trying to prove an extraordinary sighting is factual, it is not sufficient to have clear photographs and several witnesses. Ever since the photos were published explanations have been offered by people who never spoke to the Trents. These explanations have often been based on imperfect or incomplete investigations of the case. Unfortunately scientists were not interested in the case at the time that the photos were published, so the Trents were not interviewed in depth, the negatives were not carefully analyzed, and valuable data were lost forever. However, even though data are lacking, it appears from the analysis presented in this paper (and in the earlier CUFOS paper (4)) that there is no positive proof of a hoax. Rather, the available data, which do include a "life history" of the Trents since 1950, suggest that the sighting actually occurred as the witnesses claimed. The photos themselves, for reasons discussed earlier, are equivocal on the hoax hypothesis, although they strongly confirm the verbal statements if the case is not a hoax. Since the hard photographic evidence does not positively rule out the hoax hypothesis, the case will have to be resolved by studying the life history of the Trents since the sighting, and/or by a "confession". The preponderance of the information collected and analyzed by this investigator suggests that the life style of the Trents is not compatible with assuming that their very "successful" photographs resulted from a hoax . Only a confession with a description of how the hoax was carried off would now convince me that Mr. Trent did not photograph a large, distant object, the intrinsic nature of which has not yet been established.

For an updated discussion see the ADDENDA.

REFERENCES AND FOOTNOTES

1. "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,"E.U. Condon, Director (Bantam, 1969, Pg. 396) This is the final report of the Air Force funded investigation carried out at the University of Colorado. (D.S. Gilmore, Ed.)

2. Klass, Philip J., "UFOs Explained," Random House, New York, 1974

3. Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 21, 623

4. Maccabee, B., "On The Possibility That The McMinnville Photos Show A Distant Unidentified Object," Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Symposium, pg. 152 , Center for UFO Studies, Evanston, Ill.

5. Ibid., pg. 234

6. "UFOs, A Scientific Debate," C. Sagan and T. Page, Ed., pg. 12

7. Sheaffer, R. "A Further Investigation of the McMinnville, Oregon Photographs", private communication (unpublished), and ref. 2

8. McMinnville Telephone Register, June 8, 1950

9. Portland Oregonian, June 10, 1950

10. Los Angeles Examiner, June 11, 1950

11. Dept. of Commerce, Ashville, N.C., weather records for McMinnville, Oregon, May 11, 1950

12. Mrs. E. Trent, private communication (Note: this refers to information obtained during 26 telephone conversations over the time period January 1974 through July 1977.)

13. Dept. of Commerce, Ashville, N.C., weather records for Salem, Oregon, May 11, 1950

14. Sheaffer, R., "The UFO Verdict," Prometheous Books, Buffalo, NY 1981, pg. 60

15. B. Sparks, private communication

16. E. Trent, July 9, 1976 , private communication

17. "Feb. 3, 1974"

18. "Dec. 9 1975"

19. Key to decoding Aviation  Weather Reports, Dept. of Commerce National Weather Service, Wash., D.C.

20. W. Hartmann, private communication

21. E. Trent, Feb. 22, 1976 private communication

22. "Mar. 9 1976"

23. "Jul. 9 1976"

24. McDonald, Dr. James E,  notes made during phone conversations with Mr. P. Trent, Mar. 9, 1969, and with Mrs. E. Trent, Feb. 17, 1970 and Mar. 2, 1970

25. E. Trent, Oct. 25, 1976, private communication

26. "May 29, 1976"

27. Maccabee, B. (see ref. 4)

28. Maccabee, B., and C. Grover, "Veiling Glare in Camera Lens Systems", Proceedings of the Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, Volume 107, 158 (1977)

29. Claude Poher, private communication

30. Jones, L.A., and H.R. Condit, J. Optical Society of America, 11, 651 (1941)

31. Life Magazine, June 1950

32. Jones, L.A., and H.R. Condit, J. Optical Society of America,38, 123, (1948)

33. See ref. 1, pg. 37

34. Life Magazine, June 1950

35. W. Powell, private communication, July 19, 1976

36. See ref. 24, Feb. 17, 1970

37. Letter from F. Wortmann to J. McDonald, May 5, 1969

38. Letter from F. Halstead to Maj. D. Keyhoe, Apr. 4, 1959

39. Letter from R. Hall to F. Halstead, May 5, 1959

40. Look Magazine, Flying Saucer Special, 1967

41. Portland Oregonian, Aug. 3, 1967

42. E. Trent, Feb. 3, 1974 , private communication

43. "Jan.31, 1977"

44. P. Klass, private communication (letter from Maj. Hector Quintanilla to P. Klass, July, 1969)

45. Microfilm files of Project Blue Book and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at the National Archives

46. P. Klass, private communication (letter from P. Bladine, July 30, 1969)

47. F. Edwards, syndicated newspaper column, Aug. 1965

48. Maccabee, B. "UFO Related Information from the FBI File" published in monthly issues of the MUFON Journal, International UFO Reporter, NICAP Investigator, APRO Bulletin, during 1977-1979

49. E. Trent, March 9, 1976, private communication

50. "July 23, 1977"

51. P.Klass, private communication (letters from F. Wortmann in 1969 and 1972)

52. P. Klass, private communication (see ref. 46)

53. P. Bladine, private communication, April 14, 1975

54. W. Hartmann changed his opinion about the Trent case after reading Sheaffer's analysis (ref. 7) which discussed three problems with the Trent case. According to Sheaffer: (a) there are shadows on the wall which prove that the photos were taken in the morning rather than as the witnesses stated (in the evening); b) one of the shadows moved on the garage wall between photos indicating a long time between photos (minutes) rather than tens of seconds as the witnesses stated; and c) veiling glare caused by grease on the camera lens could have made the UO image in photo 1 too bright, thus invalidating Hartmann's distance calculation. Points (a) and (c) are discussed at length in the text of this paper and in ref. 4.  Point (b) was found to be in error after the original negatives were carefully investigated and no shadow movement was detected.

55. Letter from Dr. J. McDonald to W. DeFaria, March 26, 1970

56. Veikko Itkonen in a letter to Ole Henningsen, 5/19/77 and in a private communication to this author

57. A. Fryer, private communication, Dec. 10, 1976

58. Letter on file

59. C. Andrews, private communication

60. One may wonder how it happened that Mrs. Trent had the presence of' mind to think of a camera, when it is known that in some cases witnesses who have cameras near by have not thought to use them (see, for example "Missing Time" by Budd Hopkins, Richard Marek Publishers, New York, 1981 , pg 29). Her quick thinking may have been a result of previous sightings . According to ref. 9, Mrs. Trent had seen similar objects three times before. Whether these were bonafide sightings or misidentifications is immaterial as long as she thought she had seen similar things previously. Perhaps in the previous sightings she had wished she had a camera because, according to ref. 9, no one would believe-her. Apparently "no one" included her husband, because he was quoted as saying "I didn't believe all that talk about flying saucers before, but now I have an idea that the Army knows what they are"(ref. 10). But this time when she saw an unusual object she was home with her husband and she could prove it. Moreover, she knew that a camera was available, so she yelled to her husband to get the camera and he did. From the original stories and what she has told me it seems reasonable that she looked in the car while her husband, who was in the house,looked in the house for the camera. Klass (ref. 2) has used her claim to have seen objects three times previously as a "reason" for the presumed hoax, "Now, thanks to the photos, skeptical friends would be convinced." If Klass were correct, she must have convinced her husband before the photos were taken since hoax photos would not be proof for him. Either that or she convinced her husband to put on a blindfold and take pictures in the back yard while, unbeknownst to him, she hung a model saucer under the wires in line with the direction he was photographing. Then, after the pictures were developed, he was convinced. Klass (ref. 2) has also pointed out that the Trents are "repeaters," although, in fact, only Mrs. Trent reported several sightings before the photos and several afterward. This presumably means that the Trents have seen "impossibilities" occur more than once, which is highly improbable if UFOs are real, and, of course, impossible if they are not. Assuming with Klass that UFOs (saucers) are not real, then the repeated sightings must be either misidentifications or hoaxes. Since by this assumption the photos must be a hoax, then it is reasonable to assume that at least some of the   later sightings were also hoaxes to bolster their story. But pushing this assumption to its consistent limit, and considering the success of the 1950 'hoax' photos, the Trents should have produced more photos to back up their claims of further sightings. Instead, according to Mrs. Trent (who, we are to believe, had a need to create a hoax to prove herself right in 1950) "We've seen quite a few since then, but we didn't get any pictures.  They flew away too fast " (ref. 41). If the original photos were hoaxes, then Mrs. Trent's reason for not producing more pictures must be considered to be an excuse ... a "cop out". It would have been easy to produce more hoax pictures and apparently not time consuming since they managed to do it during one of their busy mornings in 1950, assuming the photos are a hoax. Perhaps the Trents were too lazy to produce more photos? But this seems inconsistent, since they are apparently very industrious people otherwise. Actually, the failure to produce further pictures in spite of the later sightings makes it seem more likely that the original photos were not the product of a hoax.

61. I thank all of the respondents to my requests for information, including especially Mrs. Trent, Philip Bladine, Arther Fryer, Mrs. James MacDonald, and Philip Klass. I also thank Brad Sparks for helpful comments on sighting directions to the UO in the two photos.