THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040190
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Eric Feber
LENGTH: 64 lines
Chicken Little, right?
An odd thing happened to Clarence Mason and his wife while they were relaxing in their home.
It seemed as if the sky were falling.
``It's not too easy to forget,'' Mason said about the mysterious object that seemed to fall out of the sky to menace his home and yard.
He said he and his wife were in their Drum Creek neighborhood home during the early afternoon when they heard several loud noises.
``We heard this crash, like a large object hitting, then we heard another noise and another and this clang, clang, clang,'' he said. ``I said out loud, `What was that?' and took off outside.''
Mason walked to the back of his house, near his garage, where he said the first noise originated. He said he saw several clay and plastic flower pots totally smashed to pieces.
``It looked like explosions of dirt,'' he said.
Looking elsewhere he saw a chunk of concrete taken out of a walkway by his garage.
``It dug out a piece of concrete. It tore the corner of the heavy concrete step,'' Mason said. ``It must have hit the step, taken the hunk out of that, then hit the house and rolled on its side. I finally noticed it in the front yard.''
The object Mason found is a 3- to 4-pound piece of metal that looks like a blade of some sort. It is 8 to 10 inches long and about 5 inches wide.
``It's tapered at one end, like a sharp blade or propeller,'' he said.
Mason thinks it could have come from a construction site on Tyre Neck Road, a quarter to a half mile away.
Even the Chesapeake police were baffled.
``They still haven't been able to figure it out,'' he said. ``They said there's not much they could do about it, since they don't know exactly what it is or where it came from.''
To do the kind of damage it did, Mason mused, the thing must have flown through the air at considerable speed at a weird, almost straight angle, like something shot from a bow or gun.
``It had to raise itself over some nearby trees that are about a 100 feet high,'' he said. ``It must have stayed in the air long enough and come down at a gradual angle or slope over another tree that's only about 20 feet high. It then flew right under our garage canopy that's 12 feet high and then hit those flower pots and the garage.''
And while airborne it must have acted like a flying scythe or razor, he said.
``It struck the tops of some plants and simply cut off the flower like a razor blade,'' he said. ``It was so sharp it gave some of my plants a quick trim. Some were cleanly cut halfway through.''
Just a month before the August incident, Mason said he and his wife were involved in an accident while visiting friends in Tennessee. The freak roadside accident slightly injured his wife and killed the wife of their friend.
``The sound I heard when that thing hit our house and garage reminded me of that,'' he said. ``They're both in my mind.''
But the mystery still remains.
What is the object? Where did it come from? And exactly what happened to cause it to fly through the air with such force?
An industrial explosion? Something from outer space?
If you know, please contact Mason at 488-0280. He and his wife are very curious. by CNB