The Remarkable Kecksburg UFO Incident
For more in-depth analysis of the story covered in this post, please buy The Alien Enigma by JP Robinson.
In December, 1965, a large fireball was seen by thousands of witnesses as it streaked across the night sky over at least nine American states and Canada. The object was considered by sources at the Pentagon to have been a meteorite from the constellation of Gemini – a Geminid meteor
The object reportedly dropped hot metal over Michigan and northern Ontario, possibly leading to a number of grass fires over three states, and the possible cause of shock waves and sonic booms as was reported by the associated press. Wagman stated that, “there were reports of a shock wave in parts of Western Pennsylvania at the time of the sighting.”[i] The unknown object was later spotted near Greensburg in Westmoreland County before it suddenly changed direction – moving past Norvell towards Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
Eyewitness Bill Bulebush described the scene, “I looked up and I seen this bluish fireball or whatever you call it, in the sky coming from Norvell and going towards the mountains. It looked like it wanted to go over the mountain but couldn’t...It seemed like it hesitated. And it finally came back and made a U-turn and went down into Kecksburg.”[ii]
Another eyewitness Randy Overly described the object as “sort of acorn-shaped” with a raised area around the back and brownish-greyish in colour with fire coming out of the back of it. With a rounded part on the very tip of the object, he explained that it also seemed to be covered in some kind of vapour which enveloped it as it flew by. Only a mere 200ft. in the air and hissing as it passed him, Overly recalled, “It was moving no faster than a small aircraft. I know what I saw, and it definitely wasn’t a meteor. I really can’t explain what it was, but it certainly seemed to be a constructed thing – it had smooth edges and smooth lines.”
Whatever the object was that had been seen by so many people over a large distance, at around 4:46 p.m. EST it crash-landed in a patch of woods, southeast of Pittsburgh near a town called Kecksburg
A reporter for the local newspaper remembered arriving at the scene of the crash, and being unable to breach the cordoned off area setup by the large military presence, he was told to stay away as there may be radiation. The following day, the Tribune-Review printed the headline; “Army Ropes Off Area. ‘Unidentified Flying Object’ Falls Near Kecksburg.”
The first person to reach the crashed object was Bill Bulebush who initially thought he was witnessing a couple of kids playing with sparklers in the woods. Before approaching the mysterious object, Bulebush could see blue flames between the gaps in the trees. As he got closer he could hear a sizzling noise, and shining his torch on it he could see that whatever it was resembled his trashcan – a burnt orange colour. With blue flames arcing out of it and still sizzling, Bulebush claimed, “it was embedded in the ground a little bit, where it came down and like, belly landed.”
It had a ring around the backend of it with “some kind of Egyptian marking” around it which he also described as looking like “backward writing”. He could see where the trees were bent in one direction, where the object had come in “like an airplane”. Bulebush continued, “...it seemed like it was controlled. Seemed like it just glided in and embedded itself into the bank.”
18 year old James Romansky was a member of the Latrobe Volunteer Fire Department at the time of the incident and recalled seeing a fiery object in the sky coming from the north. Shortly after, the fire whistle sounded and Romansky who answered the call was informed that a search team was needed because they believed that it was a downed aircraft. He thought, “My God, this is what I have just seen.”
The team searched on foot with torches and finally found the crash site. “We didn’t discover a conventional aircraft as we know it. What we did find was a very large metallic object. There was no signs of entry to it. There was no signs of windows, portholes, doors...wings...assembly...no signs of motors of one kind or another. It caught us totally by surprise”, explained Romansky.
Entirely made from metal, the object had no seams, cracks or rivet marks to show how it had been put together, it was perfectly smooth as if it had been cast. With no signs of a propulsion unit either, the craft was unlike anything he had ever seen before and just as Bulebush had described, Romansky also stated that the front end appeared to have “ploughed into the ground.”
He also described the object as bronze coloured and shaped like an acorn with a lightly blunt backend, and he estimated it to be around 12 ft. long and 25 ft. in diameter with strange markings around the base which he also commented were reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Zigzag lines, straight lines, circles and other shapes were all present.
Describing the object he added, “It had sort of a bumper on it, like a ribbon about 6 to 10 inches wide, and it stood out. It was elliptical the whole way around and the writing was on this bumper.” Not long after the fire-fighters had investigated the area, two men in white overcoats arrived and told them all to leave immediately. Minutes later the site was crawling with military personnel.
Another eyewitness, Jerry Betters, watched as an Army truck with a big white star on it drove out of the woods with a UFO on the back of it. “To me it looked copper-ish looking. Maybe it was burnt or something. It was big. It was domed and I saw the hieroglyphics on it,” Betters claimed
A few days after the incident had taken place, a truck driver using the pseudonym Myron was delivering special bricks to Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. Myron’s firm had ordered 6,500 double-glazed bricks which he claimed “were for building a double-walled shield around a recovered radioactive object.” He claimed that they were attempting to entomb the object in a corner of the base, by using the same bricks that the whole building was made of.
He first noticed the “bell-shaped” object whilst he was unloading the bricks; he said it was resting on stilts with large parachute-like screens covering it up. The shape was silhouetted by floodlights and he managed to get a closer look through a small opening in the tent.
He said, “The spaceship looked like a large acorn around about 14 ft. to the top and about 10-12 ft. wide at the bottom. It had a collar on it; it had writing on the collar. The writing went all around the bell shape of it. The bottom of the bell shape was completely black.”
In the same building as the object, Myron also recalled seeing a body lying under a white sheet on a workbench 10-12 ft. long and about 32 inches wide, 36 inches off the floor. He claimed that he saw something very unusual lying there; “I seen the left hand of whatever was in there sticking out from underneath a sterile white pad and it only had three fingers – 4 ft. 5 or 4 ft. 9 tall – dark green/brownish skin just like a lizard.”
Former Army Sgt. Clifford Stone claims that he read official documentation referring to the Kecksburg incident whilst still actively in the service. Speaking in 1990, Stone said, “The document talked about a recovery, in the Pennsylvania area. We recovered an object that was not Soviet. It also makes it quite clear that the object did not originate on the face of the Earth.”
What makes this story even more fascinating is that aside from the Geminid meteor showers that were present during the week of the alleged crash, one Soviet satellite actually re-entered the atmosphere on the same night that the unknown object went down. The Naval Space Surveillance Center in Dahlgren, Virginia confirmed this, “By reviewing our data, we were able to identify only one satellite (COSMOS 96) that decayed on Dec 9 or 10, 1965.” Further research revealed more details;
“Satellite Number: 01742
Country of Origin: USSR
Object Type: Payload
Date of Launch: Nov 23, 1965
Date of Decay: Dec 9, 1965”
Some people unwilling to accept that an interstellar craft of some kind landed in the Kecksburg woods, are more inclined to believe that the object, if it was indeed metal as so many claim that it was, must have been the Soviet satellite. However, the probability of debris from the satellite surviving re-entry and landing was nigh on impossible according to Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris at the NASA Johnson Space Center, Nicholas L. Johnson. In 2003, he told investigative journalist Leslie Kean, “I can tell you categorically; that there is no way that any debris from Cosmos 96 could have landed in Pennsylvania anywhere around 4:45 p.m. That’s an absolute. Orbital mechanics is very strict.”
Clifford Stone claims that he was told from sources who are extremely interested in UFOs within the Russian Government that, “they were informed that COSMOS 96 had collided with an object of unknown origin that came from outer space, and caused it to veer off and plunge back to Earth.”
Another theory exists that suggests that the object could have been a Nazi Wunderwaffe (wonder weapon) called Die Glocke (the Bell). Speculation as to the existence of such weaponry continues to this day, but some researchers such as American author Joseph P. Farrell believe that this device was the object recovered at Kecksburg in 1965.
Such theories only add to the mystery of the Kecksburg crash and reinforce the notion that whatever landed in the woods was of extreme interest to the U.S. military, enough so to enforce a cover-up which would last nearly half a century and counting.
Stone concluded, “Something entered the Earth’s atmosphere, something went down in Pennsylvania, something was recovered by the military, and whatever that something is – is considered by the United States intelligence committee to be so sensitive that they will even lie to members of Congress to keep that information highly classified and buried away from the public.”
Excerpt taken from The Alien Enigma by JP Robinson.
