Michigan "Swamp Gas" Sightings: Dexter and Hillsdale

March 1966. People across southeastern Michigan were reporting lights in the sky. On March 14, deputies in Lima Township reported lights in the early morning hours. Two days later, near Milan, Deputy David Fitzpatrick photographed two lights with a miniature camera on a tripod.

March 20. About 8:30 p.m. The six farm dogs at Frank Mannor's place near Dexter started barking. Mannor saw a red "falling star" to the north. It hovered over the marsh behind the farm and gave off light. He and his son Ronald walked toward it. They got within about 500 yards.

It was "brown in color and had a 'quilted' effect on the surface. It was flat on the bottom and cone-shaped toward the top." Two small bluish-green lights at its edges would "intensify and turn brilliant red at times." Then those lights went out. In an instant, the object was across the swamp. Mannor described the sound of a whistle, "something like a rifle bullet makes when it ricochets."

Patrolman Robert Hunawill said the object flew over his squad car and hovered at about 1,000 ft. After 5 to 10 minutes, three more objects joined it in formation. Deputy Stanley McFadden saw something "as large as a small house, kind of pushed down flat," with "movements which could not possibly be made by any aircraft." Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey coordinated a search of the swamp. At least 40 people, including 12 policemen, reported seeing something.

March 21. About 50 miles away, women at Hillsdale College's McIntyre Hall looked out over the Slayton Arboretum. In all, about 87 of them watched the lights over several hours. Barbara Kohn wrote three days later: "There was a glow around it and the lights appeared to be pulsating."

William E. "Bud" Van Horn, the county civil defense director and a commercial pilot, watched through binoculars. He said the object would "rise to a height of approximately 100 to 150 feet, stop momentarily and began to descend." It never made a sound. Officer Harold Hess saw "a real brilliant light in the sky at a low altitude." He and Jerry Wise tried their patrol car radio. "We just got static."

Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University, Project Blue Book's scientific consultant, arrived on March 23. On March 25, about 60 reporters gathered at the Detroit Press Club. Hynek told them the two mass sightings were probably marsh gas: gas from rotting vegetation, released in the spring thaw and ignited. The Milan photos, he said, showed the Moon and Venus. The Hillsdale lights could have been pranksters with flares.

The press mocked the idea. Van Horn disputed Hynek on 15 points and called the investigation "unscientific." Harvey later said Hynek first told him, "There is something. We just can't put our finger on it." Then, Harvey said, Hynek made one phone call to Washington and announced swamp gas. "Somebody has kept something quiet."

House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan wrote on March 28: "I do not agree that all of these reports can be or should be so easily explained away." On April 5, 1966, the House Armed Services Committee held the first open congressional hearing on UFOs. Hynek called for "a civilian panel of physical and social scientists." In October, the University of Colorado signed a contract to study UFOs. This became the Condon Committee.

"Swamp gas became a household word and a standard humorous synonym for UFOs," Hynek wrote in 1972. He called it the "low point of my association with UFOs." In 2023, Skeptoid's Brian Dunning argued that swamp gas cannot burn steadily the way witnesses described. His verdict was unsolved. The Mannor family rejected the swamp gas finding.