Near Pittsburg, Kansas - August 25, 1952 - 0530
While driving, William Squyres saw an object off to his right; he slowed down and stopped, but when he got of the car (100 yards from it) it began a rapid vertical ascent with a sound “like a covey of quail flying,” disappearing vertically. It looked like two platters put together, about 75 ft long, 40 ft wide & 15 ft high, and was hovering with a slight rocking motion 10 ft off the ground. It was a dull aluminum color, and had a row of small rotating propellers around the circumference. There was a window in front through which he could see the blue-lighted head & shoulders of a man, and several large windows in the mid-section through which blue-lighted movement of some sort could be seen. At the site was found a 60-foot impression in the grass.
Source: Project Blue Book / Humanoid Sighting Report
Type: A - When an entity or humanoid is seen inside or on top of an object or unidentified aircraft
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About 5:30 a.m., August 25, 1952, while William Squyres was driving to work from his home in Frontenac, Kansas, he saw a low-hovering object with clearly-defined windows in a heavily wooded area about seven miles northeast of Pittsburg.
"My hair rose straight up on the back of my head," he said when reporting the incident later. He described the object as resembling two turtle shells, or two oval meat platters, placed edge to edge. Along the rim where the two halves joined he noticed a series of small propellers six to twelve inches in diameter projecting outward at close intervals all the way around the object. These propellers were revolving at high speed.
Squyres said the object was about 75 feet long, 45 feet wide and 25 feet high, and was rocking slightly back and forth as it hovered over a field near the highway. The body was of a dull aluminum color and across the top and extending down to the rim of the object were several rectangular windows, through which Squyres could see a bluish light fluctuating from dark to light.
He observed considerable activity behind these windows but it was obscured "like a window shade pulled down. I could see figures behind it." Forward of these windows was another rectangular window which was clear and through it the witness could plainly see the head and shoulders of a single man, sitting motionless, and facing the forward edge of the object.
"I definitely saw a human being through the window," the witness asserted. He turned off the motor of his car and got out. He could hear a steady throbbing sound and as he approached on foot to within a hundred feet, the object suddenly rose straight up into the air and out of sight, making a sound like a "covey of a hundred quail taking off." The vegetation beneath the object was blown about as the object rose up.
Squyres was convinced that the object was "piloted by humans, and not some men from Mars." The witness returned to the scene later with officials from the radio station, who verified the fact that the vegetation appeared disturbed, "like the backwash of where the thing took off." A later investigation by Air Force officials confirmed these findings, and the reliability of the witness was termed "good" in the official report (see Project Blue Book Special Report #14). - NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon)
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NOTE: In a strange coincidence, the Pittsburg, Kansas sighting was on the same day as the following similar reports:
*Delaware, Ohio - August 25, 1952 - 0540
One observer sees a huge metallic 75-foot long football shaped craft hovering low over the ground. It had several blue-lighted windows & several figures could be seen moving inside.
Source: Paris Flammonde, UFOs Exist / Humanoid Sighting Report
Type: A - When an entity or humanoid is seen inside or on top of an object or unidentified aircraft
*Near Maxatawny, Pennsylvania - August 25, 1952 - 1935
A 25 foot shiny dome shaped object surrounded by a ring of jet pipes was seen by Herbert Long hovering 15 ft above a field about 30 feet away. It stayed there for about 7 minutes, then rose 15 ft and took off at tremendous velocity. Light and some movement were seen through portholes. Subsequently Long returned repeatedly to the site and “made 4 or 5 contacts over the following 6 to 8 months;” he was invited inside the craft. They are “observations discs” from Jupiter, piloted by men like us but more advanced, who eat no meat, and want to be friends to humans.
Source: Richard Hall / Humanoid Sighting Report
Type: A - When an entity or humanoid is seen inside or on top of an object or unidentified aircraft
Type: G - When there is direct contact or interaction between a witness or witnesses and a humanoid or entity; either involuntary, as a result of a forced abduction, or as a voluntary contact
Oddly enough, the Florida Scoutmaster Encounter was only 6 days previous...Lon
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Aliens at Pittsburg
By Rupert Matthews - Perhaps the first case of a close encounter of the third kind to be made at the time it happened, rather than in retrospect, occured on 25 August 1952. William Squyres, a radio worker in Pittsburg, Kansas, was driving to work through farmland at 5.30am along Highway 60. As he drove he saw something odd in a pasture field that usually held cattle. As he drew closer he saw the object was silvery grey in colour, about 70 feet across and 12 feet high. It was shaped, Squyres said, rather like two soup bowls placed rim to rim and then flattened somewhat.
Squyres drove up until he was alongside the field and only about 100 yards from the object. He then stopped his car and studied the object more clsoely. He could now see that the underside of the object had a faint bluish glow to it. Around the edge of the object was a rim or walkway. From this rose a number of vertical poles, each topped by what seemed to be a spinning propeller. The object was making a dull, throbbing noise.
At one end of the object there were what seemed to be opaque windows through which indistinct objects could be seen moving. At the other end was a completely clear window through which could be seen a man apparently fiddling with controls or instruments. So far as Squyres could make out, the man was entirely human.
Fascinated, Squyres got out of his car to get a better look. Instantly the object began to rise vertically, the throbbing noise increasing in volume as it did so. The object continued to rise slowly for some seconds, then suddenly accelerated and flew off at high speed.
Squyres reported the incident to the USAF in case he had seen some sort of advanced foreign aircraft. An Air Force officer turned up a couple of days later and asked to be shown the site. He found that in the centre of the field the long grass had been squashed flat in a circle about 60 feet in diameter. The grass stems had all been bent over, not broken, and formed a swirling spiral pattern. The officer collected samples of grass and soil and sent them off for analysis - which later found nothing at all unusual.
The sighting of the UFO was in many ways routine and shows many of the usual features of a close encounter of the second kind. The sighting of a pilot for the UFO inclined the Blue Book investigator to put the incident down as an hallucination, if it had not been for the flattened grass. In the event it was put down as unexplained. - rupertmatthews.com - Roswell: Uncovering the secrets of Area 51 and the fatal UFO crash
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Astronomer J. Allen Hynek wrote about the case 25 years later and said that he remembers "puzzling long and hard over this case, one of the very early ones received by Blue Book." Although he first dismissed the case as hallucination, after having encountered much cases years after years, he reluctantly admitted that such careless dismissal may not have been a scientifically bulletproof approach of the question.
The skeptic that expressed a view on the sighting merely commented that it cannot be true because of the small propellers Squire had described, claiming implicitly that the propellers really were propellers and were for lift, which is all subjective interpretation. He seems ignorant that birds do not damage planes that much in general and noted that "a bird hitting a propeller blade would cause instant disaster" and dismisses the case as whimsical invention" because of this.
The same skeptic lists the case elsewhere as to be dismissed under the motive that it was a man and not an extraterrestrial being that was seen in it, although the witness clearly said that he could not be sure of that and was merely voicing his disbelief in extraterrestrial visitors, without having the technical background and distance we now have to make us certain than no human aircraft ever matched the craft he saw. Interestingly, this skeptic author writes that the trace was a sixty foot circle of grass that was pressed down with some loose grass was laid on top as if it had been sucked up from the vertical ascent of the craft, while no source of this is given, no other sources I found provide such details, and the local newspaper actually writes that no trace was found by the officers who came at the site the same morning, and thought the nonexistent trace might have been washed away by the rain.
This skeptic also makes innuendos about ufologist hiding the case because it is supposedly ridicule due to the propellers, but it does actually appear in several compendiums of interesting sightings such as the NICAP's briefing document "The UFO Evidence" of 1964 and many other ufological sources from Vallée to Hynek to Clark etc.
One of the reasons that make the case less impressive than this skeptic tries to argue is that it has only one witness. This is why sensible ufologist would certainly not put it on the top of their "best of" lists, and I am pretty sure that if they had, some skeptics would have been quick to scoff as it is only a single witness report! This really tells a lot about the "skeptical process" on how a single witness case is being criticized for not having received the top attention a skeptic claims it deserves. In reality, the selective bias is largely on the side of the "skeptics" who only talk of a case when it already had a commonplace explanation of when they think they found one. - ufologie.patrickgross.org - The Hynek UFO report
- Dr. J. Allen Hynek - 1977The UFO Evidence - Volume 2 : A Thirty Year Report
The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence
Hair of the Alien: DNA and Other Forensic Evidence of Alien Abductions
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