Documents / FOIA release
This FBI file section contains a 20 January 1953 letter from the Johnson County, Indiana civil defense office asking J. Edgar Hoover whether the International Flying Saucer Bureau was subversive, with an enclosed issue of its bulletin Space Review. It also holds 1956 FBI memoranda and letters to Air Force investigators on a Van Nuys landing claim, a bright light seen from Oxford, Pennsylvania, and a low spinning object seen near Henderson, North Carolina. In each case the FBI took no action.
“Office of Special Investigations”16 pages
. Office Memorandum • UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO MR. NICHOLS DATE 4-10-36 Miss Johnson on 4/9/56 reported the following rather unusual occurrence which is in the "Flying Saucer" category. to go to Morven, North Carolina to meet the family. Around 5 a.m. on 4/6/56 as dawn was breaking and while driving on Route 1 north of Henderson, North Carolina, the pair was startled by what appeared to be a round low-flying object coming directly towards the car. The object appeared to pass over the car and Miss turned to see it appear to speed up and then veer off out of sight. She and Mr. both felt they had seen something unusual which difficult to explain and certainly did not appear to be an optical illusion. Miss stated the object as she saw it appeared round, was spinning and was bright as though containing a series of lights in azig-zag pattern. The object appeared to be flying very low as it came towards them, moving at great speed and gave off no particular sound. The object, to the best of her belief, was at least as wide as the highway and appeared no more than two to four feet in thickness. Miss who is one of our best employees, stated heretofore she has placed little credence in "flying saucer" stories and felt that had she and her boyfriend not seen the same object she would be inclined to think she had imagined something. She appreciates that what they saw may have been some kind of optical illusion; however, at the time the object appeared very real to them. RECOMMENDATION: If you agree, it is recommended that this memorandum be referred to the Liaison Section of the Domestic Intelligence Division for possible referral to any interested military agencies.
FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 142 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.