Silverton UFO sightings in the eyes of the beholders

Friday, June 7, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

John Darger and his family came all the way from Salt Lake City to catch a glimpse of a UFO predicted to appear in Las Vegas on Thursday.

"We're in Vegas," Darger said. "What are the odds? Not good."

Darger, a building contractor, is a skeptic and an amateur hypnotist and knows the tricks of the trade. But he said he was willing to give mentalist Kreskin a chance to pull a flying saucer out of the night sky.

The Amazing Kreskin, also known as George Joseph Kresge Jr., attracted about 300 people Thursday night to a dark desert lot behind the Silverton hotel at Interstate 15 and Blue Diamond Road.

The mentalist and entertainer had predicted that one of the largest UFO sightings in recorded history would take place in Nevada's desert in either May or June. Kreskin was so certain, he promised that if nothing was sighted, then he would donate $50,000 to charity.

But in the end Kreskin, who says he's not a psychic, never expected to see anything otherworldly himself. He planned to plant the idea in the minds of the audience to see alien objects in the sky.

"It's not going to hurt you, it's not going to jeopardize you," he told the crowd in the showroom before the sightings. "It's going to be fulfilling. It will be real to you, but it will be subjective.

"You are part of a gigantic experiment. Damn it, some of the members of the intelligence community better raise their intelligence."

The crowd headed outside, and at the drop of a hanky from the 67-year-old magical entertainer, the spectacle began. Kreskin waded into the crowd, waiting for signs of other-worldly activity.

People saw what they wanted to see, he said, adding he could not believe what people reported. "A woman cried for 11 minutes. She said she was not upset, but overwhelmed," he said.

He said he comforted the woman.

Nine men told Kreskin they saw a cloud with a strange color to it.

Shortly after 10 p.m., red and green lights began blinking in the dark sky.

That wasn't too surprising, however, since people had gathered under a flight path to McCarran International Airport. Four jets streamed toward the expectant crowd.

And a total of 30 satellites, a rocket launch in Southern California and a moonless night added to mysterious moving lights in the sky.

No sooner had the green and red lights appeared, than some of the people in the crowd began reacting.

"You may not be able to see anything," one woman cried, pointing straight above her head, "but I can feel its presence."

Another woman grabbed Kreskin's arm and cried, "I saw a green ship!"

But there were skeptics in the crowd.

"May the farce be with you," said Derek Christiansen, a budding writer, more interested in people's reactions on the ground than anything in the air.

Three children played in the sand, ignoring adults playing mind games above them.

Some people brought lawn chairs and watched the action with cold beers in hand.

Many had come prepared for something to happen. "I'm an abductee," Las Vegas resident Ginger Thompson said of a previous trip she said she took on an outer space ship. "I was really hoping for something."

Kreskin said the fact that people believed they saw UFOs proved his point, and said he would not make the donation to charity.

He had an agenda in the announcement, he said, and it was more than the publicity he received.

Since Sept. 11 he has realized that mind control such as he practices could be used on the masses, and perhaps for evil, Kreskin said.

"I want to share with the world the techniques of terrorism, something we are not ready to combat," he said.

"Imagine how easy it would be if promises are made by some evil dictator, a false messiah, another Hitler.

"I planted the seed," he said. "Imagine how a person, especially today with mass communication, a person would cause people to talk about it and spread it. I am ready to go on national television to get a million people to act within 90 seconds. God forbid a person doing it for half an hour or an hour."

That serious message escaped the believers, who enjoyed post-sighting euphoria as they left the casino clutching aliens made out of green balloons.

"I can't wait to see those aliens," Las Vegas resident Joyce Schweikert said.

John Darger gathered some of his seven children around him as the crowd broke up about 10:30 p.m. "I'm going home tomorrow, but it was fun and the truth is still out there."