A lot of eyebrows were raised last week when the New York Times had this headline on the front page: “On The Trail of a Secret Pentagon UFO Program.”

Not only did they put this headline on the front page, but they also put a video up on the Times website of an airline captain shooting footage of an unidentified flying object from the cockpit.

While this might seem like an ordinary story for the likes of the National Enquirer, it was totally out of left field for the New York Times. It was soon picked up by Politico, CNN, Fox News and a host of other media outlets that have, in the past, ridiculed these kinds of stories. But the New York Times says the story-and the video-were given to them by the Pentagon.

No one was snickering this time.

That’s fairly unusual in itself: Even airline pilots are afraid to share strange sightings with their superiors. And astronauts like Edgar Mitchell, who was an outspoken advocate on the subject, was regularly ridiculed. So was Paul Hellyer, once the Canadian Minister Of Defense. He is a believer who claims that aliens “have been visiting our planet for thousands of years” and are apparently unimpressed with how we live.

No surprise there, Paul. A lot of us are unimpressed with how we live.

Despite the strangeness of the New York Times article, I’m not here to convince you either way. What I really want to write about is Chautauqua County’s very own UFO stories. There’s been a lot of interesting sightings through the years, some which have gained notoriety.

And whether you believe in tiny green men from Mars or not, let’s just have a little fun on the eve of a New Year. Lord knows we could all use a little more fun in our lives.

Probably the most famous story in the county came out of Cherry Creek in 1965. This is a classic “farm boy stumbles on UFO” kind-of-story, but it was widely believed because of how shaken up the boy was and because there was more than just one witness.

The boy’s name was Harold Butcher. He was out in the family barn on Aldrich Road milking cows on August 19, 1965, when, as he told investigators of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, he heard an unusual noise similar to screeching coming from a bull tethered to a metal pipe in the field.

When he went to investigate, he saw a “football-shaped object hovering just above tree-level” around 500 feet from the barn. He said it had vertical seams, was about 50 feet long and 20 feet high and emitted a beeping noise.

“It descended slowly emitting a red vapor downward from around the edges,” he told investigators. Later on, Harold’s brother and a few friends reported seeing the same thing.

Harold said it hovered over the ground and then shot up into the air “as fast as the snap of my fingers.”

One of the investigators noted that “those reporting the sighting seemed convincing…too rustic to be able to create a hoax of this sort.”

The farm became known as “the flying saucer farm” and even as recently as two years ago, a television station in Buffalo came down to Cherry Creek to tell the story again.

Another interesting sighting involved two men out on the lake observing the stars through a telescope in August of 1958. They reported that they observed a series of unidentifiable lights arranged in an oval shape in the sky with one red light above and all located fairly close to the horizon.

The lights, they said, made some gravity-defying maneuvers and came in and out view.

Interestingly, it seems that a man-made jet was trying to chase the lights near the end of the men’s nearly 45 minute sighting, which they were able to view from time to time through their telescope.

None of this would be as interesting if it weren’t for the fact that one of the men was a retired professor of engineering from New York University. He made for a pretty credible witness.

And finally, I found all kinds of reports of sightings in Chautauqua County on the internet posted in the past few decades. In fact, Western New York made the top five list for sightings in the state from 2001-2015, according to a UFO/UAP sightings report.

One interesting claim came from two anonymous couples who were out in a boat near Lakewood in July of 2014 when they saw “a large stationary object” that began to “brighten and dim.” They report that they watched it for awhile, and were amazed when they saw another smaller object come out of the larger object. Then both objects disappeared.

So, there you have it. I guess our little spot in the world isn’t immune to the earth’s mysteries.

If any of it is true, I say what lucky visitors to stumble upon such a beautiful and friendly place.