The 1975 Lumberton UFO Wave: Police Across North Carolina Report a Silent V-Shaped Craft
In the early morning hours of April 3, 1975, shortly after a violent thunderstorm swept through southeastern North Carolina, police officers in the town of Lumberton began reporting something unusual in the sky.
At first, it appeared to be a strange light near a local water tower. But within minutes, multiple officers on patrol began describing the same object—seen from different locations across the town.
What followed over the next several days would become one of the most unusual law-enforcement UFO cases in the region. According to reports later compiled by investigators with the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), more than thirty law enforcement officers across a seven-county area reported observing a large, silent craft between April 3 and April 9, 1975.
Despite being miles apart, witnesses consistently described the same object: a V-shaped craft lined with red and red-green lights, sometimes accompanied by bright white spotlights, maneuvering silently across the night sky.
The First Police Sightings
The first reports came shortly after 1:45 a.m. on April 3, when three Lumberton patrolmen—Phil Stanton, P.H. Atkinson, and Neil McCormick—noticed a strange light near a water tower behind Lumberton High School while patrolling near Highways 211 and 101.
Officer Atkinson initially assumed the object might be a helicopter. But as the officers watched, the light moved across the sky in a wide arc. When they drove toward Fayetteville Road to get a closer look, the object abruptly vanished from view.
Atkinson later described the light moving across the sky before suddenly disappearing. As he recalled in later interviews, “It just went out.”
Within minutes, other officers began calling in similar sightings from different parts of the area.
As reports began pouring into the Robeson County Sheriff’s Department, dispatchers noticed something striking: witnesses who were miles apart described the same configuration of lights and the same unusual flight behavior.
The object was typically described as V-shaped or triangular, with rows of colored lights along its edges and one or more bright white beams that resembled spotlights.
Even more puzzling to observers was what they did not hear.
Despite appearing to fly at relatively low altitude and, in some cases, directly overhead, the craft was consistently described as completely silent. One officer reportedly remarked that the object passed overhead “without a sound.”
A Multi-County Wave
Over the next several nights, reports spread beyond Lumberton itself.
Officers and residents across seven counties in southeastern North Carolina reported seeing the same unusual craft moving across the region. In many cases, officers who responded to civilian reports observed the object themselves.
Investigators later noted that witnesses consistently described similar characteristics, including a large V-shaped craft, rows of red and red-green lights, bright white spotlights directed toward the ground, sudden turns and hovering movements, and the absence of any audible engine or rotor noise.
These similarities appeared in reports from witnesses who often had no contact with each other at the time of observation.
Key Events During the Sightings Wave
- April 3, ~1:45 a.m. – Three Lumberton police officers observe a strange light moving near a water tower behind Lumberton High School.
- Soon after, additional officers across the area began reporting a similarly described object moving through the sky.
- Following nights (April 3–9) – Sightings are reported across multiple counties in southeastern North Carolina. Officers sometimes respond to civilian calls and then observe the object themselves.
- Early April – A United Press International (UPI) story about the sightings circulates nationally, drawing attention from journalists and UFO investigators.
- Shortly afterward, reporter and investigator Lee Speigel travels to the region to interview witnesses and examine the case firsthand.
Speigel’s Investigation — and His Own Sighting
When journalist and UFO investigator Lee Speigel first learned of the Lumberton sightings through a UPI news release, he initially assumed the case might have a conventional explanation.
Accompanied by a reporter from the National Star, Speigel traveled to North Carolina to investigate the reports personally. Flying into Fayetteville, about forty miles north of Lumberton, he looked down at the landscape where the sightings had been occurring.
From the air, he could see miles of swamps, rivers, farmland, and forests stretching toward the Atlantic coast—a remote, sparsely populated region.
He approached the case with the expectation that a logical explanation would likely emerge once he spoke with witnesses and examined the circumstances. But during his visit, Speigel himself reported witnessing the object.
While observing the sky with local officers during the investigation, he saw what appeared to be the same unusual craft reported throughout the region. The object moved silently across the sky, displaying multiple lights and a shape that appeared structured rather than star-like.
According to his account, the craft maneuvered in ways that seemed inconsistent with ordinary aircraft. Watching the object move through the sky, Spiegel later wrote, made it far more difficult to dismiss the officers’ reports as simple misidentifications.
What had begun as a journalistic investigation had unexpectedly placed him among the witnesses.
Watch Speigel discuss his encounter at this link.
An Unresolved Case
The sightings eventually drew the attention of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who had served as scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book and who later founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
Researchers working with CUFOS, including investigator Jennie Zeidman, compiled witness interviews, timelines, maps, and news coverage into what became known as The Lumberton Report.
Despite the large number of witnesses and the consistency of their descriptions, no definitive explanation was identified.
Possible explanations, including helicopters, aircraft, or astronomical objects, were considered, but none appeared to fully account for the reported characteristics, particularly the silent operation and abrupt maneuverability described by observers.
Nearly fifty years later, the Lumberton sightings remain a relatively little-known but notable case in UFO research—one involving dozens of trained law enforcement witnesses reporting the same unusual craft across multiple counties over several nights.
As with many UFO cases from the era before widespread video recording and satellite tracking, the evidence ultimately rests on eyewitness testimony. Yet the consistency of those accounts and the involvement of so many police officers continue to make the 1975 Lumberton UFO wave one of the more intriguing law-enforcement UFO cases in the historical record.
- Special thanks to David Marler of the National UFO Historical Records Center for providing the Lumberton Report, news clippings, and other documents, and to Lee Spiegel for providing his report and information about his personal encounter.
