Painting by Mark McCandlish of Art and Ramona Bell’s August 1994 UFO sighting.
On the evening of August 29, 1994, radio host Art Bell and his wife Ramona had a most unusual encounter in the desert near their home town of Pahrump, Nevada. I will be covering Art and Ramona’s sightings in a future show.
On Coast to Coast (available online in a podcast with Art from the September 2, 1994 show), Art bell shared his complete sighting and it’s details with John Lear on his show. Art and Ramona both related seeing a 100 foot diameter triangular UFO that was traveling to the west/northwest complete with strobe lights. Art said it was moving very slowly or “floating” as Art characterized it’s behavior as it passed overhead.
Ramona shared her sighting in an interview as quoted below:
It was after 11:30pm on August 29th, 1994, less than five miles from our residence in Pahrump, NV. After finishing Art’s then Sunday show “Area 2000”, which was broadcast from KDWN in Las Vegas, we were on our way home. The night sky was clear with a nearly full moon. The air temperature was around 75 degrees with little wind. Out where we live, there are no public street lights and just a scattering of homes, so other than the moonlight, it was very dark.
We had just stopped at Homestead and Kellogg, getting ready to turn. Art was driving, I was turning to look at him when I noticed a strange movement coming from the left and slightly behind us. I could see a huge, dark object moving toward us from the rear window and began to yell at Art, “What is that- What the Hell is That??” We jumped out of the car and watched this huge, triangle-shaped object float across the Pahrump valley from southeast to northwest. It was right over our heads, maybe 150 to 200 feet above us, moving slowly, too slow for aircraft we were familiar with.
Google Maps street view of the sighting location in modern day Pahrump
There was a white, strobing light on the nose of the craft, and two stationary white lights on the rear. It was big enough blot out the stars and moon as it passed. The most unnerving part of this sighting is that for as big as this craft was, there was absolutely no noise, not a single sound could be heard except for crickets. We watched this thing drift for more than five minutes across the valley before losing sight of it.
We finally got home, sat down and compared our thoughts about what happened. Art said he had to go on the air to talk about our sighting the following night and that I had to verify the story. I was reluctant to do this, but Art was adamant that we both had to give our side of the experience. I considered myself fairly open-mined about most paranormal experiences, i.e., ghosts, witchcraft, OBEs’, NDEs’, clairvoyance, even UFOS and ETs’, but this was more than I wanted to see or experience in my lifetime.
Now for the funny part. Two weeks after our sighting, our local newspaper ran a story saying that the object that was seen over the Pahrump valley by other people as well as the two of us, was a C-130 transport plane that was on a secret training flight passing on through the valley. This was the statement given by Nellis Air Force Base. Art served in the Air Force and knows how loud a C-130 is, that they cannot fly at such a slow speed. All I can say is what I saw was real, and still disturbs me to this day.”
Art shared more details of the encounter with Ramona in this report on ABC news:
A fan of Art Bell decided to visit the Pahrump Museum where Art and Ramona’s encounter is celebrated with a painting donated by Art to the museum, leading to the fan and friends seeking to find the exact spot where the encounter took place.
Art and Ramona’s Second Sighting
Art and Ramona had a second UFO sighting by Art and Ramona on Memorial Day, May 26, 1997. This can be heard in the video below:
Daytime sighting of round ufo seen against a passing aircraft – Painting by Randy Stiefer.
Art’s wife Ramona Bell described this UFO sighting that happened while she and Art watched a high-altitude military aircraft in the Nevada desert.
As they watched the jet cross overhead, they observed an object in the field of view near the contrail, shining in the daytime sky. It presented as a silver cylindrical object that glowed with an intense brightness. The object would swing back and forth and also tracked the contrail of the aircraft. Ramona characterized the UFO as shining as bright as a bright light on a mirror.
The object, which they watched with binoculars for 4-6 minutes, was completely silent, and eventually moved rapidly away.
This sighting was immortalized in a painting by an artist named Randy Stiefer which, it would seem, closely matches what Art and Ramona observed.
Footnote
The painting of Art and Ramona’s encounter in 1994 by artist Mark McCandlish has one further bit of interesting lore, relating to the artist who painted it. It seems that Mark supposedly killed himself with a gunshot to the head at his home in 2021. Like many other UFO researchers whose deaths are… suspicious, I find this death to be evidence of something very disturbing. There seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding the death. I do note that there are a lot of UFO researchers who have supposedly commited suicide and it strikes me that there is a LOT more to these deaths than meet the eye. Time will tell the story with regard to all of these, but I dedicate this article to Mark’s memory and hope he rests in peace.
More on Mark’s death here on this link.