Loch Raven Dam car-stall encounter (Philip Small and Alvin Cohen)

Loch Raven Reservoir lies in Baltimore County, north of Baltimore, Maryland, near Towson. A bridge carries the road across the water near Loch Raven Dam. Project Blue Book's summary would later call it "Bridge No. 1 over the reservoir." The late 1950s brought a wave of reports in which cars died near unknown objects. The best known came from Levelland, Texas, in November 1957. Less than a year later, it happened here.

The night of October 26, 1958. Philip Small, 27, and Alvin Cohen, 24, were driving toward the bridge. Then they saw it. A "large, flat sort of egg-shaped object hanging between 100 to 150 feet off the top of the superstructure." They put it at about 100 feet long. It glowed a dim white.

"When we got to within 80 feet of the bridge, the car went completely dead on us," Small said. "It seemed as though the electrical system was affected." The dash lights went out. The headlights went out. The motor died.

The two men got out and hid behind the car. "There was no place to run," Small recalled. "We probably would've if we could've but we were terrified at what we saw." They watched for somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute. Then the object flashed. "It seemed to flash a brilliant flash of white light, and we both felt heat on our faces. Concurrently there was a loud noise, which I interpreted as a dull explosion."

The object began to rise. Straight up. It did not change its position as it climbed. It grew very bright and diffuse, its edge fuzzy. "It took from five to ten seconds to disappear from view completely." Only then did the car work again.

They reached a phone booth in about 15 minutes and called the Ground Observer Corps, with no result. Police interviewed them. Their skin had been reddened on the side facing the object. Small spoke of a "tremendous heat wave," after which their faces felt sunburnt. They were examined at St. Joseph's Hospital in Baltimore.

They were not alone that night. A 16-year-old boy and two employees of a lakefront restaurant reported similar glowing objects around the same time and place. The restaurant staff heard "a loud boom that sounded like an explosion or a thunderclap."

The report reached the Air Force, and Project Blue Book assigned 2nd Lt. Bert R. Staples. He found both men "well educated" and "sincere." The file concluded that "it can be assumed that the sighting did actually occur as related," but that "no valid conclusion could be reached as to the nature of the object or phenomena, and it remains unidentified." Staples put it plainly. "This UFO remains unidentified." Small's own verdict was simpler. "I am sorry I saw it; I wish I hadn't seen it."

Officials reportedly suggested a Navy blimp. The witnesses rejected it. A blimp does not account for the flash, the heat, the boom or the dead car. The thunder-like noise invites talk of lightning, but no source has proposed it, and no weather record for the night has surfaced. No hoax allegation has ever been made.

The case entered the literature through J. Allen Hynek's The UFO Experience in 1972, Jerome Clark's The UFO Book, and the Center for UFO Studies catalogue of vehicle interference reports. NICAP logged it under October 27. Sixty years on, the Baltimore Sun revisited the story, and the Knollwood neighbourhood in Towson staged a Halloween "alien invasion" inspired by it.