Recalling John Lennon's UFO Sighting

Lucy in the Sky With Little Green Men? John Lennon Believed in UFOs. Maybe.

By Colleen Long
The Associated Press
10-11-05

      NEW YORK (AP) - The story goes something like this:

     On a warm August night in 1974, John Lennon was staying in New York with his assistant May Pang when he stepped naked out to the balcony of his apartment to enjoy the breeze. In the dim haze he saw a circular, brightly lit UFO floating silently in the sky about 100 feet away. He screamed for Pang who ran to the terrace and saw it, too. It hovered for a few minutes, then disappeared.

     Lennon refers to this on the cover of this "Walls and Bridges" album, released later that year. Pang has given several interviews swearing that it's the truth.

     Some people think it's a bunch of bologna and it is more likely that Lennon and Pang were high as kites at the time and were hallucinating. Or maybe Lennon was just kidding around. (Remember the old Beatles rumor that Paul was dead?)

     But others, like Michael C. Luckman, think it's the honest truth and want to make sure everyone else knows about it. He recently wrote a book called "Alien Rock" where he reports what he's discovered about the Lennon tales, and also digs into second and third-hand stories about other rock stars like Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix and their possible alien links.

     Luckman showed off his new book to a captive audience at the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park on Sunday, just yards from where Lennon was shot to death in 1980 by deranged fan Mark David Chapman. Wearing a blue blazer and a blue shirt dotted with bright drawings of the solar system, he also brought along a model of the purported Lennon UFO.

     "I interviewed friends, wives, ex-wives and tons of other people for this book," Luckman said. "It took me three years to write this. And it's true information."

     Luckman hasn't seen any UFOs himself. "You don't often see them in New York."

     And he admits some don't believe in alien sightings, but he thinks that way of thinking has changed.

     "If a flying saucer landed right now in Central Park people would say it's theatrical," he said. "But that's not the prevailing opinion. The prevailing opinion has shifted. The majority of people believe in aliens."

     In a sort of aside, Luckman also has copies of photos that he claims prove Lennon is trying to contact his fans from the nether world. To the skeptical eye, the images in these photos look like blobs of light in the sky, possibly a lamp something, or a bit of metal reflected. It seems there could be a million explanations without resorting to ghosts or aliens.

     Luckman disagrees. "What else would it be? It's clearly John trying to get in touch with the living," he said. "Why else would the light be reflected right where he was shot?"

     Perhaps the supernatural is simply in the eye of the beholder.

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