"When the strange objects were visible they adopted different forms of appearance. When I first saw them they looked like small dark sticks and after just 3 - 5 seconds they morphed into small circular light balls, some dark and some white. Or did they just seem to be white because of the reflection of the sun? It seemed they had a strange blinking and besides that I didn´t notice any other colors.

"While they were flying they also moved their positions, some objects up went up while some of the other objects went down. They flew from the Northeast East to the Northwest West of the city of Madrid at a fast speed, taking a maximum of 40-50 seconds to pass by. The sun was behind me and I was standing looking to the North oriented between the strange flying objects and the sun and it was almost time for sunset.

"There was high chemtrail activity January the 4th and the next day, January 5th too, and during all the five times I saw them including January the 13th, 20th, and 22nd, there were either long persistent trails or short non-persistent trails in the sky, but there were always trails. So, the trails were there before, during and after I saw the strange flying objects. All photographs were taken with a Kodak DX4330, 3.1 Megapixel digital camera."

This is the stuff legends are made of. But for some Aztec residents and big-time ufologists, this had the makings of a story that would put Aztec on the map.

Leanne Hathcock, Aztec librarian, and Scott Ramsey, a friend from North Carolina, began the Aztec UFO Symposium nine years ago with the purpose of propagating the story and the small town it hailed from.

This year the symposium will feature big names in the fields of ufology and the paranormal, and it will be held on the 58th anniversary of the purported crash -- March 24-26 at the Aztec Public Library, 319 S. Ash.

Ramsey of Charlotte, N.C., has dedicated all of his spare time to researching this alleged crash. He has 3,400 pages of declassified documents from the U.S. military and the FBI.

"It's all there in black and white," Ramsey said. "That's a lot of (pages) for an event that didn't happen."

Ramsey, who will speak at this year's symposium, said he recently discovered proof of photographs being taken at the crash site.

"According to the FBI file, someone was trying to sell them to the Baltimore Sun," Ramsey said, adding he will share 19 years of his research at the symposium.

"I will take my research and go back 50 years and take every skeptic and critic of the Aztec incident and prove them unequivocally wrong," Ramsey said.

In addition to Ramsey's speech, the symposium will also feature lectures from former State Rep. Andrew Kissner, who will discuss documents that former Congressman Steve Schiff had declassified.

"The public will see documents for the first time ever on the Schiff investigation and other phenomenon," Ramsey said. "He's got some stuff that will blow your mind."

The late Schiff, when in office, urged the federal government to declassify documents pertaining to the famous 1947 UFO crash in Roswell.

Also speaking is Linda Moulton-Howe, an award-winning journalist; Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and renowned ufologist; Dennis Balthaser, a ufologist specializing in the Roswell crash; Frank Feschino, author of the book "Braxton County Monster;" and Scott Littleton, a professor, who has studied UFO sightings in Los Angeles in the 1950s.

Suzanne Ninos-Ramsey, formerly of Farmington, will be the emcee. She became involved with the symposium as an event planner, and then ended up marrying Scott Ramsey after winning a date with him through the symposium.

She said the dedication to research from the speakers is what has impressed her most about this symposium.

"What I have seen with the speakers is if it is not documented, it doesn't exist," Ninos-Ramsey said. "Everything is thoroughly documented."

She has traveled across the country with Ramsey as he attempted to gather evidence from eye witnesses and their families. She said it has been and interesting and eye-opening experience.

"People are interested in getting to the truth," she said.

Those wanting to learn more about the alleged crash and other UFO sightings are invited to attend, Ramsey said, adding that law enforcement and military personnel, firefighters and emergency medical technicians and their families are admitted for free.

Information: (505) 334-7658 or www.aztecufo.com.

Debra Mayeux: dmayeux@daily-times.com

Most of us have experienced odd coincidences that make us wonder.

My most recent experience with how small the world is involved the column I did about a Glen Park man who found an old football in a heating duct in his home.

He had called to speak to someone in our sports department, but none of the writers or editors, who usually work late shifts, were at their desks.

So he followed the phone system prompt to press 0 to speak to someone in the newsroom immediately. I just happened to pick up the phone.

That column ran on a Sunday. On Monday, one of my writing students at Indiana University Northwest told me that the finder of the football was her stepfather, and the duct in which it was found heated the room in which she slept until she moved out of the house shortly before he called the paper.

But this coincidence is cosmically small change in comparison to something that happened recently in Buffalo, N.Y.

Kevin Stephan, 17, was washing dishes in a restaurant when a customer, Penny Brown, began choking. A volunteer junior firefighter, Kevin stepped up and performed the Heimlich maneuver, according to The Associated Press.

Only when Penny had regained the use of her windpipe did Kevin’s mother recognize her as the nurse who performed CPR on Kevin when he was struck on the chest by a baseball bat in 1999.

As strange as this is — Penny says she can’t think about the incident “without being freaked” by it — such things happen.

Call it the hand of God, a manifestation of “The Force,” or an obscure amendment of the laws of probability, coincidence abounds in a range from the simply odd or the truly bizarre.

A similar tale of reciprocal life-saving occurred in Massachusetts in 1973. Roger Lausier, 13, saw a man struggling in the water off a Salem beach and went into the water to save him.

The man he saved was the husband of Alice Blaise, who had saved Roger from drowning when he was 4.

While you’re hearing that “Twilight Zone” music in your head, here are a couple more well-known classics.

Before filming started for “The Girl from Petrovka,” released in 1974, actor Anthony Hopkins spent a day in London bookstores looking for the George Feifer novel upon which the film was based. After a fruitless search, he headed for the train station, where he found a copy of the book on a bench. Years later, he met Feifer, who identified the find as a copy of the book he had loaned to a friend.

And on the dark side of coincidence lives a Bulgarian woman, an Internet legend, named Martha Martika, whose husband was killed by lightning.

She remarried and her second husband also was killed by lightning.

Perhaps figuring that the third time is the charm, she remarried, but, alas, lightning killed that husband, too.

In a case like that, the superstitious would suspect some kind of a curse.

But even those of us who are dubious when it comes to hexes have to admit that strange things happen.

And all we can do is hope than when the fickle finger of fate points in our direction, it isn’t spouting lightning.

Jim Gordon’s column also runs on Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 648-3116 or at jgordon@post-trib.com