Kecksburg is an unincorporated community in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located in a heavily wooded area along PA Route 982, it is approximately thirty miles southeast of Pittsburgh at an elevation of 1,209 feet.
The Kecksburg UFO incident occurred on December 9, 1965, in the Pennsylvania town of the same name, in the northeastern United States.
A large fireball was seen by thousands of people in at least six US states and the Canadian province of Ontario. It passed briefly over the area of the cities of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, supposedly showering hot metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio. The press generally assumed it was a meteor, and reported it as such at the time (ruling out other alternatives such as a crashed plane, an errant missile, or space debris from an artificial satellite).
A few eyewitnesses in the small town of Kecksburg, located about 50 km southeast of Pittsburgh, claimed that something had crashed in the nearby woods.
The fall and recovery of metal debris were reported in or near Elyria (Ohio) and Livonia, Jackson, and Battle Creek (all three in Michigan). Sources reporting on this phenomenon on December 10, 1965, included the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, which reported that several grass fires had broken out.
Grass fires associated with falling debris were widely reported in press reports by the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) news agencies in Elyria and Eaton Township, near Columbus (all three in Ohio), and near Lapeer, Michigan, about 40 miles north of Detroit. Witnesses also reported smoke in the woods associated with the debris that fell near Kecksburg, causing sonic booms in western Pennsylvania. Witnesses and the press also reported smoke in the woods near Kecksburg.
Mabel Mazza, former administrative director of the WHJB radio office, recalls:
“People were telling me something had fallen in Kecksburg.
In an interview recorded on the ground that night by reporter Murphy, an 8-year-old boy said he had seen, while with his mother, an object fall in the woods that
“looked like a burning star.”
Bulebush, a retired truck driver, now 80, says,
“I was listening on the radio to some guys from Ohio saying they saw this thing going east, too, and they were wondering what it was. All of a sudden, I heard a hissing sound and I looked up and saw it flying right over me and it was sputtering. I got out of the truck to get a better look and watched it and it was like a big ball of fire in the sky and it was heading toward the mountain, then it went back a good way and all I saw was it was changing direction and coming down toward Kecksburg… I pulled over at the top of the hill and put my headlights on. I could see it down there in the valley floor, up in those trees, that’s where it landed, it hit the top of the trees. I stayed there for about 15 or 20 minutes watching it. I saw it about 10 or 15 feet from behind a big tree because I was worried it might explode. It smelled like sulfur or rotten eggs and it was shaped like an acorn.” “It was huge, about the size of a Volkswagen. It was bright orange in color, burned from front to back. You could see the ring on the back, which looked like Egyptian writing. It had no windows, no seams, no rivet marks, it looked like it was all one piece.”
William Weaber, then 19, states:
“The evening light was fading, but we could see down there. I was very curious and went in to see if anything had landed there… it was like it had been planted or something. It was radiating a blue light like a blowtorch. I don’t know if it was from the front, the back, or the side. It got very bright, then dimmer, and it came and went.”
Robert Blystone, then 16, recalls:
“It was a round ball of fire, with flames all around it, leaving a vapor trail of different colors. It started to slow down as if it was in control. Then it realized it was behind the hill where I couldn’t see it anymore. But I started to see smoke or dust rising from the trees, so what I assumed was that the object in question had crashed.”
Witnesses also reported the presence of a significant number of soldiers, particularly the United States Army, who could be identified by the white stars on their vehicles and their distinctive uniforms.
Mabel Mazza claims that she received phone calls from military commanders that day, “asking me how to get to Kecksburg and what I knew.” They and local police secured the area and ordered civilians to withdraw. Blystone claims that he saw a military truck with a flatbed trailer enter the area and then drive away, taking with it an object of similar size covered with a tarp.
There are various theories attempting to explain the Kecksburg incident:
– A crash of an advanced, extraterrestrial technology machine “Die Glocke” designed in Nazi Germany, which was intended to be used for flying or traveling through time and space. After the war, the equipment was supposed to be transported to the United States.
– pieces of wreckage from the Soviet space probe Kosmos 96, which was launched with the intention of reaching Venus but failed to leave Earth’s orbit due to a fault.
– a secret American vehicle generating radioactive radiation.
– a meteorite fall, which would be the most rational explanation.
Witnesses to the incident claim that they saw the military take an acorn-shaped metal object onto a truck and drive it out of the forest.
There are many hypotheses, but as always in such cases, governments remain silent, hiding the facts so as not to scare the public.
It is possible that it was an advanced flying vehicle of unknown origin, but it may take many years before we find the truth.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kecksburg_UFO_incident
