On the evening of December 9, 1965, a large, brilliant fireball was seen in at least six U.S. states and Ontario, Canada as it streaked over the Detroit, Michigan–Windsor, Ontario area. Reports of hot metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio,grass fires, and sonic booms in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area were attributed to the fireball. Some people in the village of Kecksburg, about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Pittsburgh, reported wisps of blue smoke, vibrations, and a "thump",and also that something from the sky had crashed in the woods.
An early story in the Greensburg Tribune-Review stated the following:
"The area where the object landed was immediately sealed off on the order of U.S. Army and State Police officials, in anticipation of a "close inspection" of whatever may have fallen ... State Police officials there ordered the area roped off to await the expected arrival of both U.S. Army engineers and possibly, civilian scientists.'
When state troopers and Air Force personnel searched the woods, they found "absolutely nothing". Subsequent edition in the Tribune-Review bore the headline "Searchers Fail to Find Object". Authorities discounted proposed explanations such as a plane crash, errant missile test, or reentering satellite debris and generally assumed it to be a meteor. Astronomer Paul Annear said the fireball was likely to have been a meteor entering the Earth's atmosphere. Geophysicist George Wetherilo discounted speculations that it was debris from a satellite and agreed that the reports were probably due to a meteor. Astronomers William P. Bidelman and Fred Hess said it undoubtedly was a meteor bolide. A spokesman for the Department of Defense in Washington said first reports indicated the reported fireball was a natural phenomenon.
This occurance is nearly 60 years old, but through the years the story has remained in the public. In 1990, the NBC television show Unsolved Mysteries aired an episode partially devoted to the incident. The episode suggested an extraterrestrial craft had crashed. It quoted local residents at the time who said they had found an object in the woods shaped like an acorn and about as large as a Volkswagen Beetle bearing writing resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs which was subsequently removed in a secret military operation. A prop from that show remains on display in the village. In 2003, the Sci Fi Channel aired a two-hour documentary, "The New Roswell: Kecksburg Exposed", hosted by Bryant Gumbel. In it, Kecksburg resident John Hays says that as a 10-year-old boy, he saw a flat-bed truck emerging from the site near his house, carrying something "the size of a VW”, an exact repetition of the claims he made in the first episode of Unsolved Mysteries, season 3, in 1990.
Was Kecksburg another Roswell? Did a UFO crash in this quiet community? If you have any details, please reach out to us!
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