House Armed Services Committee hearing on UFOs, April 5, 1966

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Frank called his 19-year-old son, Ronnie. Suit pants or not, they started down
toward whatever It was. "I thought a meteor had hit, that maybe we could
pick up pieces of it," Frank said.
It never for a minute occurred to him that the United States hadn't had a
good1 mysterious flying saucer manifestation for a coon's age, that it was proba-
bly time for a new visitation from the mysterious little men from outer space
and that they had decided to use southern Michigan in general and his swamp
in particular for the dangdest display of flashing lights and whizzing half-seen
objects since. Frank Perkins fired a .22 rifle at a New York crow-and hit a
fireworks factory-back-in 1951.
Frank Mannor soon realized that he and his son were stalking some kind of
thing. The ground between his house and the swamp Is hummocky, rolling, but
the night was clear and moonlit and the glow ahead was plain. "Just like we
were hunting deer," Frank said to Ronnie, "Don't talk, we'll sneak up on it."
They jumped a creek, climbed a rise, and there it was, a few hundred yards
ahead In the marsh. The thing seemed as long as an automobile, and wore a
green light on one end and a white light on the other. Its back was humped
and looked grayish- or bluish-brown and was "quilted" or rough "like coral
rock," It seemed to be sitting perhaps 8 feet off the ground In a patch of mist.
"Like a man In a boat on a misty lake in the morning-you can see the man
but can't quite make out the boat."
Suddenly it turned blood red. "Look at that horrible thing, Dad," blurted
Ronnie-and the lights instantly went out. Both began running toward it.
"I was a-puffln'," said Mannor. "But when we got there It waq gone. I hunted
for 4 hours but there was no sign or smell of It. I'm glad I didn't have a gun.
I'd a shot it and I might have lidtimed someone."
Back at the house, meantime, Mannor's wife Leona-a woman who wears
shapeless slacks and a flannel shirt with the tall out-decided to call the nearby
Dexter village police. "We've got an object out here," she said formally. "that
looks like what they call a flying saucer. It's got lights on it down 1iW the swamp."
Since the Mannors are on an eight-party line Leona told a great mony other
other people, too, and the word spread like lightning-or the glow from a flying
saucer. Cops and deifity sheti~ffs were soon tumbling out of cars and thrashing
off toward the marsh, and the road beyond the house was jammed solid with
the cars of gawkers. Most of them were rewarded for their effort. Dexter
Police Chief Robert Taylor and Patrolman No1an Lee saw the red glow as they
stumbled around in the dark; so did Washtenaw Coutty Depilty Shei'iffs Stan-
ley McFadden and David Fitzpatrick. All reported, like Mannor, that the light
eventually vanished. But unlike their host, who said, "I never seen it take off,"
the cops felt It had zipped away over Mannor's house making a sound like "an
ambulance."
"I seen it," said McFadden, "but I still don't believeit."1
Dexter Patrolman Robert' Hinrnwill saw a "strange, lighted object" appear
over his patrol car as he waited in'the road for those who had set out for the
swamp. It had red and white lights "which at times had a bluish tinge" and
made contthifink sweeps over the swamp at a height of 1,000 feet and then, on
being joined by three other "objects," flew away. Chief Taylor's 10-year-old son
Robert saw one lighted thing at 10:30. It flashed red and white and hurried off
to the west
Ann Arbor, though sharply divided between scoffers and believers the next day,
still seemed to feel a unanimous civic pride In the fact that the Air Force had
taken cognizance of its lurid phenomenon by dispatching Astronomer J. Allen
Hynek, director of Northwestern University's Dearborn Observatory, to weigh
the tales of the elect and, no doubt, send a message of gravity and import to the
Pentagon. They were even more heartened to hear that Hynek did not instantly
announce that Mannor and his fellow bushwkhackers had simply seen the Uni-
versity of Michigan's dish-shaped Peach Mountain radio telescope, which stamids
against the sky beyond the area in which they saw the glowing thing. Hynek, a
bearded man who has investigated a hundred other "sighthigs" for the Air
Force in the last two decades, was sure Mannor was too accustomed to the tele-
scope to ever mistake It for anything else.
"I believe the people who made these sightings are entirely honest and sin-
cere," he said. "But I am not willing to guess what they saw." He hedged when
asked if he thotight thb thing knight conceivably have been a new "test vehicle"
of some sort, "I think I know much more of what Is going on than * * *" he
began, but then halted and said, "so I don't think I should say anything *
I'm sure there is some natural explanation for all of this."