The Kecksburg Crash
Date: December 9, 1965
Location: Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, United States
One of the most remarkable UFO cases occurred in early December 1965 in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. This sighting consisted of hundreds of witnesses who not only reported seeing the object, but also the dramatic measures the military undertook to cover up the incident. At approximately 17:00, individuals in Ontario, Canada, reported seeing a bright fireball in the sky. Initially, many thought that this was a meteorite, however, at one point, the object changed its direction and started heading south toward Pennsylvania.
The first official report was made at 18:30 by a woman named Frances Kalp, who at the time, was at her home in Greensburg when her two children ran inside the house and told her that they had seen a “star on fire” crash into the woods.94 As Kalp and her two children made their way toward the site of the crash, they were taken aback when they saw an oddly-shaped object in the middle of the woods. From half a mile away from the object, Kalp described it as being bright and in the shape of a “four-pointed star.” 95
At that point, seeing the area full of smoke, Kalp took her children back home and phoned WHJB, the local radio station in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to report the incident. At the station, John Murphy, who was the news director, took her call and immediately forwarded her report to the Pennsylvania State Police. Within a couple of minutes, Murphy arrived at the scene, where he immediately noticed that the police had sealed the woods as they started their search for the crashed object. He also noted how they had Geiger counters to record radiation levels. After several minutes, the two officers who were leading the primary investigation, Carl Metz and Paul Shipco, returned to their vehicle and refused to tell Murphy whether they had found a crashed object or not. Given the fact that Kalp and her two children had seen the crashed object in the woods, Murphy found it quite suspicious that the officers refused to answer his question. When he continued pressing for answers, the officers told him to ask the army.
Murphy was not getting any answers from the officers and they even denied him asking further questions, which is why he decided to go to the state police headquarters in Greensburg to talk to the captain himself. When he arrived, he noticed that the building was full of air force personnel. When he did get the opportunity to talk to Captain Joseph Dussia, he asked for an official statement. Surprisingly, Dussia told him that after a thorough search, they failed to locate any object in the woods. Knowing he was not going to get any genuine answers, he left the building. On his way out, he recognized an officer who was part of the search team in the woods. Albeit the fact that just minutes earlier Dussia had told Murphy that nothing had crashed, the police officer confirmed that they had identified and located an object that was pulsating a bright light.
At the crash site, several local residents, as well as television reporters, had now gathered looking for answers. Although the area was sealed for investigation, several individuals managed to enter the woods and got a closer look at the crashed object. One of the individuals was Stan Gordon, one of the leading independent researchers of the Kecksburg crash. Gordon, who started his own investigation that same day, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, one being Jim Romansky, a firefighter who had arrived at the scene shortly after the accident was reported. Romansky stated that the crashed object had “cut a furrow in the streambed and came to rest in a hollow where it was partially concealed.” 96 Romansky also described the object as having the shape of an acorn and had a diameter of nine to twelve feet. It had a golden bronze color and at the bottom of it was a band that had hieroglyphic symbols carved on it. Perhaps the most crucial characteristic of the object, which proved that it was not a terrestrial aircraft, was the fact that Romansky and his colleagues failed to locate an engine or any windows, doors, or wings.
As the night set in and people started leaving the site, Bill Weaver, another witness who had come in close proximity to the object, reported seeing military men dressed in white overalls carrying a huge box into the woods. It was at that moment that Weaver was spotted by an army official who instructed him to leave the area. Project Blue Book reports show that the investigation was terminated at around 01:00 when a military flatbed truck arrived at the scene. After a few minutes, individuals stated that they had seen military vehicles escorting the truck. At the back of the truck was an object covered by a large tarp. What was so secretive that the air force had to cover? What was so secretive that the truck had to be escorted by multiple military vehicles?
The Aftermath
Once the truck left the area, the military personnel began to leave as well. However, the following day, details of the incident started to emerge. Several witnesses from different states started discovering metallic fragments on their properties. The material was similar to aluminum foil. However, this was dismissed by the air force as being chaff from aircraft that were carrying out military exercises over the area.
Several other witnesses came forward too, one of whom was Mary Keto, a local resident of Greensburg who had seen a “hovering fireball just above the tree line with blue smoke coming up.” 97 Other eyewitnesses included firefighters who were the first to arrive at the scene. An unnamed firefighter stated that although they found several fires in the woods, they were unable to locate what had caused it. Newspapers published articles with headlines such as “‘Unidentified Flying Object Falls Near Kecksburg” found in the Greensburg, Pennsylvannia, Tribune-Review and “Army, Police Seal Off Woods in UFO Probe” in the Boston Record American. It was clear amongst the individuals who were at the site that an extraterrestrial object had crashed in the woods. This was also supported by the military’s reaction to the crash. If the object that had crashed was a meteorite, it would have been quite odd for the military to take such drastic measures to conceal the fact that a meteor had crashed. After all, it would have been a natural phenomenon.
An Official Explanation
The first explanation that was provided by Project Blue Book stated that the crashed object was a meteorite. This theory immediately contradicts the explanation of the Pennsylvania state police, which originally stated that no objects were located at the crash site. However, even if it was the case that an object had crashed, it most certainly was not a meteorite. Ivan Sanderson, a biologist, carried out his own investigation. He interviewed several witnesses and compiled a detailed account of all the reported sightings. From the statements, Sanderson concluded that the object had traveled in a clear trajectory, from the northwest to the southeast. It remained visible for around six minutes, which means that it was travelling at one thousand miles per hour. If these calculations and details are accurate, this makes the object too slow to be a meteorite.
Moreover, the general description of the object does not match up with that of a meteorite. If one takes a look at the general crash site of a meteorite, one would notice that there would be a massive crater. Not only was this missing, but individuals reported seeing a fully compact acorn-shaped object. The object, which was golden bronze in color, had hieroglyphic symbols carved on its lower half. We must also ask why such a drastic response was taken by the military if it was simply a meteorite that had crashed. Why was the crash site sealed and treated as top-secret if it was simply a natural phenomenon?
In 2005, NASA stated that they had analyzed metal fragments that were collected from the Kecksburg crash site. The analysis showed that the metal was from Cosmos 96, a Russian satellite. The space agency stated that the satellite had re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and broke up; crashing into the woods in Kecksburg. Conveniently, when investigators started asking questions, NASA stated that they had lost all records relating to the investigation and analysis. The most recent publication states that this possibility is an unlikely one. The publication states the following: “Investigations of photographs and sightings of the fireball indicated its path through the atmosphere was probably too steep to be consistent with a spacecraft re-entering from Earth orbit and was more likely a meteor in a prograde orbit from the vicinity of the asteroid belt, and probably ended its flight over western Lake Erie. U.S. Uncertainties in the orbital information and reentry coordinates and time make it difficult to determine definitively if the fireball could have been the Cosmos 96 spacecraft.” 98
Conclusion
As with every other UFO case, the government did not offer a conclusive explanation. The two explanations that were theorized contradicted the statements that were given by the police department on the day. Apart from that, even if we do consider the meteorite hypothesis, the details provided by the witnesses do not match up with that of a meteor. Although this case remains unsolved and open, the facts speak for themselves. One thing we can conclusively say is that the air force did not want the public to find out what had truly crashed in the forest.
94. Kevin D. Randle, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky: A History of Famous Incidents, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups, (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2010), 208.
95. Randle, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky, 208.
96. Randle, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky, 212.
97. Randle, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky, 208.
98. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Cosmos 96,” NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, accessed September 14, 2020, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1965-094A.