The 10 Weirdest UFO Cases in Indiana History

From abductions and saucers to Air Force investigations and Congressional hearings, Hoosiers have claimed their share of run-ins with the unknown.

As a subject of two recent TV documentaries, the case of former Brownsburg resident Matthew Reed—detailed in IM’s March 2014 feature, “Alienated”—might presently be Indiana’s most famous extraterrestrial encounter. But it’s certainly not the first.

Mysterious “Airship” Sightings / Vincennes (1897)

Starting in 1896, witnesses in California reported seeing a large, unidentified craft in the sky, and numerous sightings surfaced in other states as the object (or objects) purportedly made its way east across the country—that is, before the invention of the airplane and long-range dirigibles. Newspapers hyped the progress of the “airship,” including the Vincennes Morning Commercial, which, in April 1897, printed the accounts of a number of “reputable citizens” who variously claimed to have seen something resembling a sphere of golden light, a ball of fire, and a flying steamboat.

A “Huge Metallic Object” / Terre Haute (1951)

Just four years after the oft-disputed UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico, a Teletype message arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, addressed to a member of the USAF intelligence brass. It related that Roy Messmore, chief aircraft communicator at Terre Haute’s Hulman Municipal Airport, had “joined the ranks of those who now believe in flying saucers” after he saw a “huge metallic object speeding across the field.” Air Force intelligence ordered an immediate investigation and discovered that a pilot flying over nearby Paris, Illinois, had separately reported a similar sighting only three minutes later. An official report concluded that what the men saw “may have been jet aircraft observed when the reflection of the sun may have distorted the aircraft in the eyes of the observer.” In his bestselling book The Hynek UFO Report, J. Allen Hynek—an astronomer and pioneering UFOlogist known for introducing the “close encounter” classification system—described the incident as “one of the rare cases in which observers in separate localities saw the same UFO at almost the same time.” (Hynek, left, is pictured with fellow UFOlogist Jacques Vallee.)

J. Edward Roush and the Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects / Washington, D.C. (1968)

Roush, a congressman from Huntington, Indiana, and member of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, was, in his own words, “keenly interested in the whole problem of UFOs.” Accordingly, he organized and chaired the Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, held on July 29, 1968—only the second (and last) time the topic has had a formal hearing on Capitol Hill. The proceedings included testimony from the likes of Hynek and now-famous cosmologist and author Carl Sagan; then-congressman Donald Rumsfeld, also in attendance, astutely noted that the study of UFOs was “a rather unique situation.”

UFO Invasion of 1973 / Delaware County

On the night of October 9, residents of east-central Indiana lit up first-responder switchboards with upwards of 700 calls reporting UFO sightings, according to an article in The Cincinnati Post. Local law-enforcement officers spent hours tracking the object, described as “blinking a red-white-blue revolving light and often hovering near the ground.” (We can only presume they weren’t merely seeing the flashers of their own squad cars.) Astronomy students at Ball State University claimed to have seen the UFO by telescope, and radar operators at an airfield in Fort Wayne allegedly “picked up an unexplained blip on their screen.” In fact, a widespread flurry of such activity—known as a “flap”—that October came to be known as the UFO Invasion of 1973, and congressman Roush, quoted in the Columbus Citizen Journal, worried that “the increased sightings nationally could lead to a state of panic and hysteria, and we ought to be concerned about it.”

The “Visitations at Copley Woods” / Indianapolis (1983)

As the story goes, Debbie Jordan-Kauble, then a young woman living with her parents at their eastside home, was abducted by alien beings and subjected to transgenic experimentation. Evidence of the “visitations” remained in the form of a bare spot in the yard where, it was said, no vegetation would grow for years. Her account was documented in the bestselling book Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (which identified Jordan-Kauble as “Kathie Davis” and used a fictional place name), by popular paranormal author Budd Hopkins. The story also inspired a television miniseries.
The Mongo Photo / Mongo (1994)

In northeastern Indiana, near the Michigan border, six men were sitting around a campfire on the night of August 31, when, according to a Michigan Department of Natural Resources fire supervisor identified only as “JK,” they saw something “glowing through the treetops” that “moved right out from behind the trees and into an open area near a road and hovered toward us. And it was clear as can be. It was a flying saucer, just that vivid.” One of the men managed to take a photograph

of the object (pictured). Although a blimp was reportedly in the area that night, an investigator from the Indiana chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)—an organization of volunteers who investigate accounts of extraterrestrial phenomena—looked into the report and determined that “the aerial object photographed cannot be positively identified at this time. It remains a UFO.”

Kokomo Boom / Kokomo (2008)

At approximately 10:30 p.m. on April 16, several loud, percussive noises rattled homes in Kokomo, and residents reported seeing streaks of light illuminate the sky. The event prompted local authorities to dispatch law-enforcement officers to look for a possible downed aircraft, but no evidence of a crash was ever found, according to an Associated Press article printed the next day. An Indiana Air National Guard officer based in Fort Wayne said the “boom” and accompanying lights could have come from F-16 jet training exercises breaking the sound barrier and deploying flares—but added that his unit’s logs did not show that any sonic booms were produced that night. In the transcript of a radio transmission from the evening, a sheriff’s deputy says, “Grissom [Air Reserve Base, near Kokomo] just advised me their security forces advised that there’s not any military aircraft that’s been up or doing anything in that area because they just contacted Ft Wayne as well, just to make sure.” Some UFOlogists have disputed that F-16s were the source of the phenomena, claiming on one website, for example, that monitoring revealed “at least three (3) anomalous radar-only tracks which exhibited ‘unusual flight characteristics.’” The Discovery Channel’s Investigation X program later highlighted the incident on national TV:

Matthew Reed Abduction / Brownsburg (2009)

On the night of March 30, while driving home to Brownsburg after seeing a movie in Avon, Matthew Reed (pictured) reportedly saw an orange ball of light in the sky. Then, about an hour and half later, he found himself outside of his vehicle, which was parked on the side of the road. He later revealed that he had been taken aboard a spacecraft and examined by extraterrestrial creatures—and that he and his brother were abducted on three separate occasions as boys living in Massachusetts. The case has been featured in documentaries on the Science Channel and Destination America.

A Family Secret Revealed / Logansport (2011)

MUFON Indiana only recently logged case no. 32747—but it contained the oldest report in its files. On October 20, a man submitted an old video recording of his great grandmother and her sisters, recounting the details of an alleged UFO encounter their father, a farmer, had experienced in the Logansport area, probably sometime in the 1890s. On the tape, one of the women describes taking food to her father and grandfather in the field one day, when they yelled at her to hide in the woods. They later told her they’d seen a machine fly over the field, and that little people had gotten out of the craft, collected samples of corn and soil, and then departed. The woman’s father then made her promise never to talk about it.

Lucky Point: A Hoosier Hot Spot / Monroe City vicinity (ongoing)

In southwest Indiana, near Vincennes, a patch of land near a rural stretch of White River—known as Lucky Point—has purportedly been the site of unexplained phenomena for several decades. In 1986, the Vincennes Sun-Commercial, citing then-MUFON Indiana assistant state director Jerry Sievers, reported that there had been nearly 100 UFO sightings there in the past 10 to 15 years. In one case, a farmer claimed to have seen an “orange ball of light” hovering over his cattle pen and, the next day, found a calf whose brain had been removed from a precise, egg-shaped incision. In other account, a sheriff’s deputy had stopped his car in the area and seen a “large black triangle, 100 feet on a side,” with beings looking out of the craft’s windows. One evening in 2006, investigator Kerry Teverbaugh, who lives in the area, received 10 calls in the span of a half an hour, from witnesses who, according to his statement, claimed to have seen “a domed disc, dark in color with three large orange lights along the edge in a triangle configuration.”

Evan West - Executive Editor - Indianapolis

If you missed Part I in this series click here: http://ufodigest.com/article/historical-perspective-0306

In a continuance from the previous article we saw the undeniable rise in UFO sightings as man’s technological prowess began to take on disturbing dimensions in the years following World War II. In 1952 US high command frustrated over the stubborn butchery of the North Korean and Chinese forces along with their refusal to negotiate peaceful terms discussed the use of tactical nukes in order to persuade them to reconsider.

Korean conflict coincides with UFO

In Korea the best fighter aircraft and seasoned World War II pilots of America and secretly of even the Soviet Union engaged in legendary air to air battles known as “dogfights”. “Mig Alley” a hotly contested quadrant over a military grid map over the border of North Korea and China became the site of vicious high speed maneuvering F-86, P-80, Gloster Meteors, US Naval Panthers, B-29 bombers, F-84 Thunder Jets, along with such prop driven fighters as F-51 Mustangs, F-82’s among others. Many of these aircraft eventually fell prey to Russian built MIG-15’s. Only the F-86 series fighter could hold its own against the swept wing MIG. As Allied forces stood greatly outnumbered by Mao’s Red Army, only ground attacks by various venerable American built fighters were capable of neutralizing the onslaught.

Worldwide spying?

Perhaps as many have suggested, the appearance of intense UFO activity in the post -World War II era was merely a global surveillance program as human capabilities were measured and our intentions were determined. It is hard to say. However, it is undeniable that as man’s development pyramided into globally destructive capacity accompanying this newfound power was the emergence of the UFO.

Air combat increases

Though UFO and human fighter aircraft engagements were rare in the late 1940’s that trend was to change in a shocking manner as thousands of mysterious crashes and disappearances began to leave traces in the night skies and in the fields of rural areas as investigators began hiding the gruesome truth. FAA crash teams and Air Force investigators began assigning vague designations to mysterious aircraft losses where seasoned war veterans with excellent flight experience were involved. According to Frank Feschino in his book “Shoot Them Down” by 1952 US high command was indeed demanding that UFO’s be brought down by force if necessary.

Faster US aircraft

By the year of 1953 the world’s first mass produced supersonic fighter came onto the scene to be quickly accompanied by more of the “Century Series” jet fighters. The F-100 Super Sabre quickly became the work horse of General Curtis LeMay’s Strategic Air Command. Too late to enter the Korean War the “Sabre Dog” as it was affectionately nicknamed became the outstanding world beater of a jet interceptor it was intended to be. Just another piece of the human arsenal that would pursue UFO’s all over the air space of the world, the F-100 was followed by a number of sophisticated aircraft.

Mounting evidence

Feschino’s book “Shoot Them Down” is corroborated by statements made by Major USMC retired Donald Keyhoe, who revealed that US Navy fighter pilots admitted to him that they were instructed to ram flying saucers if they could safely eject before impact. Keyhoe, the original authority on UFO’s for decades due to his connections in the Pentagon found that the US military was desperate to recover UFO hardware before the Russians did in the “Cold War Era”. In the book “Aliens in Space” Keyhoe’s revelations were often a thorn in the side of the US Air Force.

NASA scientist Richard Haines weighs in

Another authority who corroborates the existence of numerous ill-fated air to air engagements between military pilots of the world and flying saucers, particularly US aviators, is former NASA scientist Richard Haines, whose UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) files reveal tampering and mislabeling of actual aircraft losses as being intentionally distanced from their association with UFO’s at the time of the crash. In doing so, Doctor Haines has estimated that literally hundreds of UFO encounters and even crashes that occurred in conjunction with them were dismissed or denied in this fashion! This he reveals as being an administrative cover-up among federal agencies that has gone on for decades.

The nuclear saga

Bikini Atoll was the site of a number of immensely destructive Hydrogen Bomb tests from 1946 to the mid 1950’s. As the undeclared air-war between the US military and UFO’s went unreported to the American public, the thermo nuclear warfare continued on a deadly pace between the United States and the Soviet Union as tensions remained high. These toxic forays into the deadly testing of dooms day weapons may very well have been used as an ominous weapon to our alien invaders that we would rather scorch this planet and destroy ourselves than allow them to conquer our world. Even when indigenous populations were returned to their native island, or what was left of the Atoll, contamination was detected in food grown from the soil. Once again, the natives were removed from their home due to unsafe radiation levels.

New challenges to the UFO

New generations of US war planes emerged from the hangars of American aircraft builders such as North American, Fairchild, Vought, Lockheed, and Boeing as they produced such formidable aircraft as the F-101 Voodoo, the F-104 Star Fighter, F-106 Delta Dagger, F-8 Crusader, and the F-102 Delta Dart. These supersonic aircraft were even equipped to launch nuclear tipped missiles and would become the leading edge in America’s stand-off capability against not only its conventional enemies but, at times, the mysterious UFO. It seems that arms race was also being paralleled by another kind of race perhaps just as deadly and definitely more of an intelligence challenge than simply human aggression. Many of these new generations of fighter aircraft would see action years later in the Vietnam War.

In Part III we will further explore the unfolding human technological race co-existing with its enigmatic counterpart-the UFO.

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