The Kecksburg UFO Incident, part 3

http://www.kecksburgvfd.com/UFO_Store.html

A reporter and news director for the local radio station WHJB, John Murphy, arrived on the scene of the event before authorities had arrived, in response to several calls to the station from alarmed citizens, and took several photographs and conducted interviews with witnesses. His former wife Bonnie Milslagle later reported that all but one roll of the film were confiscated by military personnel. WHJB office manager Mabel Mazza described one of the pictures: "It was very dark and it was with a lot of trees around and everything. And I don't know how far away from the site he was. But I did see a picture of a sort of a cone-like thing. It's the only time I ever saw it."

In the following weeks, Murphy became enveloped with the incident and wrote a radio documentary called Object in the Woods, featuring his experiences and interviews he had conducted that night. Shortly before the documentary would've aired, he received an unexpected visit at the station from two men in black suits identifying themselves as government officials. They requested to speak with him in a back room behind closed doors. The meeting lasted about 30 minutes. A WHJB employee, Linda Foschia, recalled the men had confiscated some of Murphy's audio tapes from that night, and that no one knows what happened to the remaining photographs. A week after the visit, an agitated Murphy aired a censored version of the documentary, which he claimed in its introduction had to be edited due to some interviewees requesting their statements be removed from the broadcast in fear of getting in trouble with the police and Army. The new version contained nothing revealing, and didn't mention an object at all. Mazza remembers the aired documentary was entirely different from what Murphy had originally written.

After the airing, Murphy became uncharacteristically despondent and completely stopped all investigation on the case and refused to talk to anyone about it again, and never gave clear reasons why. In 1969, John Murphy was struck and killed by an unidentified car in an apparent hit-and-run while crossing a road. The hit-and-run occurred in California, while Murphy was on vacation

The Kecksburg UFO Incident, part 2

Several articles were written about the fireball in science journals. The February 1966 issue of Sky & Telescope reported that the fireball was seen over the Detroit-Windsor area at about 4:44 p.m. EST. The Federal Aviation Administration had received 23 reports from aircraft pilots, first starting at 4:44 p.m. A seismograph 25 miles southwest of Detroit had recorded the shock waves created by the fireball as it passed through the atmosphere.

A 1967 article by two astronomers in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (JRASC) used the seismographic record to pinpoint the time of passage over the Detroit area to 4:43 p.m. In addition, they used photographs of the trail taken north of Detroit at two different locations to triangulate the trajectory of the object. They concluded that the fireball was descending at a steep angle, moving from the southwest to the northeast, and likely impacted on the northwestern shore of Lake Erie near Windsor, Canada.

The JRASC trajectory was at nearly right angles to a trajectory that would have taken the fireball in the direction of western Pennsylvania and Kecksburg. Thus, if the calculation was correct, this would rule out the fireball being involved in any way with what may or may not have happened in Kecksburg. The JRASC article negative result is often cited by skeptics to debunk the notion of a Kecksburg UFO crash.

However, a recent reexamination of the JRASC article points out that it contained no error analysis. The triangulation base used by the astronomers in their calculations was very narrow. As a result, even very small errors in determination of directions could result in a very different triangulated trajectory. It was found that measurement errors of slightly more than one-half degree would make possible a straight-line trajectory towards the Kecksburg area and a much shallower angle of descent than reported in the JRASC article. It was also pointed out that the photos used actually show the fireball trail becoming progressively thinner, indicating motion away from the cameras or in the direction of Pennsylvania. Had the trajectory been sideways to the cameras, as contended in the JRASC article, the trail would have remained constant in thickness. Thus, the contention that the JRASC article conclusively ruled out any connection between the fireball and the Kecksburg events is now open to question.


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Small W. Pa. town cashes in on mystery of 1965 crash, UFO buffs

Small W. Pa. town cashes in on mystery of 1965 crash, UFO buffs

MOUNT PLEASANT, Pa. (AP) -

Forty-two years ago something bright, shiny and acorn-shaped flew out of the sky and landed in a wooded area in Westmoreland County.

The feds said it was a meteor. Some theorized it was a Russian spacecraft. Many believe it was a UFO.

In the end it doesn't matter. The mystery is bringing in the dollars and the Kecksburg fire department has big shopping plans.

Kecksburg is a small town of about 200 people that sits about 43 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The fire department is selling $25 hoodies, $12 Christmas ornaments, hats, T-shirts, beer mugs and anything else that can have a glowing acorn flying through the sky emblazoned on it.

Ronnie Struble oversees the sales, which hit $10,000 in 2007. He also coordinates the visitors, sometimes busloads of them, who want to be a part of the mystery.

Struble says the extra cash will be used to buy a new fire truck.

Business has been so brisk, the department is planning to open a second store at the station and a UFO restaurant.

http://www.whptv.com/news/state/story.aspx?content_id=0e703427-874f-4356-8435-1551cffe8315

So what did happen in Kecksburg that night?

The Kecksburg UFO incident of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, USA occurred on December 9, 1965. A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in at least six states and Ontario, Canada. It streaked over the Detroit, Michigan/Windsor, Ontario area, dropped reported metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio, and caused sonic booms in western Pennsylvania. It was generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor.

However, eyewitnesses in the small village of Kecksburg, about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, claimed something crashed in the woods. A boy said he saw the object land; his mother saw a wisp of blue smoke arising from the woods and alerted authorities. Others from Kecksburg, including local volunteer fire department members, reported finding an object in the shape of an acorn and about as large as a Volkswagen Beetle. Writing resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics was also said to be in a band around the base of the object. Witnesses further reported that intense military presence, most notably Army, secured the area, ordered civilians out, and then removed the object on a flatbed truck. At the time, however, the military claimed they searched the woods and found "absolutely nothing."

The nearby Greensburg Tribune-Review had a reporter at the scene; the headline in the newspaper the next day was "Unidentified Flying Object Falls near Kecksburg — Army Ropes off Area."

The official explanation of the widely-seen fireball was a mid-sized meteor, however, speculation as to what the Kecksburg object had been (if there was one — reports vary) also range from it being an alien craft to the remains of an unmanned Soviet Venera 4 atmospheric probe, also known as Kosmos-96, originally destined for Venus. (However, this was recently ruled out by NASA's chief in charge of tracking orbital debris.)

Similarities have been drawn between Kecksburg and the Roswell UFO incident, and as such, is known as "Pennsylvania's Roswell".