The Olden Moore Landing and Radiation Case, Montville, Ohio

Autumn 1957. Sputnik 2 had launched on November 3. A wave of sightings was sweeping the United States, from Levelland, Texas, to White Sands. In Geauga County, Ohio, the small community of Montville was about to join it.

Wednesday, November 6, 1957. About 11:30 at night, Olden J. Moore, a 28-year-old plasterer, was driving home alone. He saw an object like a bright meteor split into two pieces, and one headed straight up. The other grew larger, changing from bright white to a green haze, then blue-green. It hovered about 200 feet above a field, then landed with a soft whirring sound, perhaps 500 feet away.

Moore watched for about 15 minutes and described a "covered dish," about 50 feet in diameter and 15 feet high, with a 10-foot cone on top. It sat in a haze, pulsating slowly. When he walked toward it, he heard a humming or ticking sound. He went home to fetch his wife as a second witness. When they came back, it was gone.

The next morning Mrs. Moore reported it to Geauga County Sheriff Louis Robusky. Kenneth E. Locke, the county Civil Defense director, surveyed the field for radiation. At the centre of an area about 50 feet across he measured about 150 microroentgens per hour. Normal background, he said, was about 15. Toward the edge, the readings fell to 20 to 30.

There was more. Two perfectly formed holes, six inches in diameter. Fresh marks in the earth. Footprints that came from nowhere and went nowhere. A NICAP adviser made plaster casts. "There was something there," Locke told the press.

Project Blue Book took the case, and its chief, Lt. Col. Robert Friend, interviewed Moore. What came next rests on Moore's word. He said he was flown by military helicopter to Youngstown, then taken on through Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to Washington, D.C. He was held for three days in a downtown building and questioned by three separate groups. He was shown slides and photographs of UFOs, reportedly taken from military aircraft. He was told the objects were neither American nor Soviet. He signed a secrecy statement.

In early 1959 he recorded his story on tape, and copies circulated among saucer groups. Two representatives from Wright-Patterson then visited him. They tried to convince him he had seen a "big fireball."

In March 1962, Friend told Saucer News editor James W. Moseley that Moore had privately admitted the Washington story was false and had simply been away from home for a few days. C. W. Fitch replied in June 1963. He described Moore as an upright man, strongly committed to church activities, and unlikely to invent either the sighting or the officials. John Keel noted that neither the sheriff nor the Air Force would corroborate the Washington episode. As for the fireball, it fits a meteor breaking in two but does not explain the hovering, the landing or the marks in the field.

Project Blue Book still lists the case as Unknown. Jacques Vallée catalogued it as case 433 in Passport to Magonia, and Jerome Clark gave it pages in The UFO Encyclopedia. Keel counted it among the early stories of official intimidation behind the men in black legend. Online, it goes by a nickname. Thingnik.