Mysteries of the Troup-Heard Corridor

A number of counties in central Georgia and Alabama along the state line and known as the Troup-Heard Corridor have, over the past years, been home to UFO sightings, strange happenings and a multitude of “military” plane sightings.

UFO investigator John C. Thompson has done an excellent job in documenting many of these sightings and I would refer the reader to web searches containing “Troup-Heard Corridor” and the research and articles he has done. The corridor includes portions of west-central Georgia and east-central Alabama and has a long history of UFO sightings and paranormal activity.

Stretching from east-to-west for approximately 120 miles and south-to-north for 70 miles, the corridor includes the Georgia counties of Upson, Talbot, Meriwether, Harris, Troup and Heard and Alabama counties of Chambers, Randolph, Tallapoosa and Clay. And perhaps should also include Cleburne County judging by some of the strange events going on there.

These include a UFO sighting by two Cleburne County Sheriff’s deputies and a Ranburne resident.. Thompson, along with sheriff’s deputies I have talked with, say the area has inadequate radar coverage and while radar coverage overlaps, it interlocks at only more than 2000 feet altitude allowing for a 2000 feet ceiling under which to fly undetected.

In Alexander City a couple awoke to a terrifying shaking of their house in 1983. The inside of their house was lit-up as bright as day according to Thompson. When the couple got up the light and shaking stopped so they waited until morning to check outside. The next morning they saw a blackened area about 10 feet wide on their concrete driveway inside of which were several blasted out spots and a strange grid-like pattern etched a quarter-of-an-inch deep into the driveway. The couple’s son operated a concrete factory and he believed temperatures in excess of 750 degrees F. were required to burn the pattern into the driveway.

On Nov 9, 1991 a Randolph County man claimed he was abducted and taken to another planet where he saw the classic “gray” aliens and smaller “browns” and two American military officers! He also said that his pickup truck had splotches burned into it. Over the past 50 years there are similar reports in which American military officers were supposedly “seen” in the presence and with aliens.

This of course raises the question as to whether the American military is actually involved with some alien life forms or whether the military is behind the whole UFO-contactee scene and are actually “generating” these experiences.

A woman in Valley said she had been abducted for two hours by a very tall alien who levitated her into a white ball.

A bigfoot sighting was also made not far from Valley in the early 1980s.

March 4, 1994 an Alabama Air National Guard F-4 exploded in mid-air. Approximately four weeks after the mysterious explosion, six moon-like UFOs were seen floating through a cow pasture. According to Thompson, a Heard County, Georgia fireman claimed that before the F-4 exploded, he had seen it just two minutes earlier chasing a missile-like UFO over Hwy. 27 in southern Heard County, Georgia. He said the UFO was about a third of the size of the F-4 and was accelerating away from the F-4. The Air Force blamed a faulty weld in the outer combustion chamber of one of the plane’s engines as cause of the explosion. The pilot of the F-4 was killed and the surviving weapons system officer told Thompson he did not see any UFOs.

On West Point Lake a lady had a daylight sighting in May, 1994 of a low hovering, capsule-shaped UFO.

Three other witnesses on July 5, 1994 saw a UFO in Franklin. Again, like the sighting on West Point Lake, they all said it hovered low to the ground for a long period of time and moved slowly away.

In the summer of 2003 two Cleburne County Sheriff’s deputies were out patrolling shortly after midnight along Alabama 46 in the Trickum Valley area when their patrol car was suddenly bathed in bright light as if they were parked inside a well-lit football stadium.
The officer driving attempted to outrun the light but it continued to hover over them and finally they pulled off the road to get a better look. After a few minutes the UFO departed but all of the electronics in the car were rendered useless.

The vehicle would crank and run but the lights and other electrical equipment would not work. They luckily had a hand held. self-contained spotlight and one officer held it outside the side window so that the officer driving could see how to drive down the road.
The car’s electronics did not come back to operation and the vehicle was placed into a shop for repairs. In the process of leaving the scene the two officers ran upon some teenagers who were out camping and they also saw the mysterious light.

This was not the first time, in the same general area, for one of the officers to see a mystery object. The previous year, around the same time period, the officer and his son saw some type of object fly over them leaving a lot of wind in it’s wake but no sound. And a year prior to that the officer had seen a strange looking object move slowly from behind some trees, stop, back up as if trying to hide and then swiftly moving forward, rising, banking and flying off toward a nearby mountain.

When the odd shaped object moved from behind the trees the first time the officer saw what appeared to be a man sitting inside a bubble-type “cockpit”.

I later interviewed a 65-year-old resident of the area who said there is a lot of large “cargo-type” planes which regularly fly through the area at almost tree-top level (you can see the pilots in them he said). He said there had always been reports of “unusual lights” and visual sightings of a lot of helicopters “hunting dope”.

A Ranburne, Alabama resident said an unusual aircraft began flying over their house in 1997 and continued for many months - always at 10 p.m.. She said she assumed the aircraft was involved in drug interdiction work or practicing low level flying. She said the craft was very unusual looking with what appeared to be a massive wide-screen television in the middle of the underside - probably an open bay.

She said the craft made an extremely loud noise. She had been around the military and had friends in various branches of the military and no one had ever seen a craft as described or heard such an extremely loud sound - far louder than any known jet, bomber or cargo plane. Now living in Georgia, the lady said looking back on the time spent near Ranburne she realizes there were a lot of power surges and a lot of buzzing on her phone line which she could not easily explain.

I have lived in Heflin, Alabama for the past 12 years and noticed what appeared to be a military cargo plane, similar to a C-130 fly very low over my residence one a week on the same night and time for all those year.

Other residents I talked with said similar flights have happened for the past 25-30 years without any explanations.

So perhaps Cleburne County also needs to be added to the Troup-Heard Corridor.