The 1973 UFO Flap: The Autumn of Aliens

By 1973 the Air Force was out of the UFO business. Project Blue Book had closed in 1969. So the reports that autumn went to sheriffs, deputies and city police. It began around midnight on August 30, with "unidentified flashing lights" over south Georgia. They flashed blue, yellow and green as they moved.

September 8. At Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, military police Bart J. Burns and Randy Shade reported a saucer-shaped object with red and white lights. It "dove at MP patrol vehicle repeatedly and chased it at high speeds." On October 11, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker said they were taken aboard a glowing egg-shaped object on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. Their story went national, and the reports multiplied. In Pine, Louisiana, sheriffs chased pulsating orange objects.

Then came October 17. NICAP would call it "perhaps one of the most extraordinary single days for 'high-strangeness' cases in UFO history." Near Eupora, Mississippi, a 50-foot wide, dome-shaped UFO hovered 2-3 feet above Highway 82. The witness's car lights went out and the engine died. Near Danielsville, Georgia, a silver, oval-shaped object landed 300 feet ahead of Paul Brown's car. Two small beings in silver suits and white gloves appeared underneath.

At about 10 p.m. in Falkville, Alabama, Police Chief Jeff Greenhaw answered a call about a landing. He found a figure in a silvery suit. It "moved slowly like a robot toward the car," then began running "in a very odd manner, from side to side, arms down." Greenhaw took four Polaroids, each closer than the last.

The same day, Ohio Governor John J. Gilligan told the press he had seen one himself, an amber vertical beam of light near Ann Arbor, Michigan. "I'm absolutely serious," he said. "It was not a plane. It was not a bird." Walter Cronkite took the story national on the CBS Evening News.

Tennessee had its own autumn of aliens. On October 1 at Anthony Hill, near Pulaski, three teenage boys saw an egg-shaped craft land during a storm, and "a huge, hairy robot-like creature that walked mechanically with its hands upraised." At Fort Wayne, Indiana, military radar at Baer Field picked up an object on October 9, and police said 750 persons spotted it. On October 18 near Mansfield, Ohio, Capt. Lawrence J. Coyne and his Army Reserve helicopter crew described a big, gray, metallic-looking hull about 60 feet long. A green beam "swept around and shone into our cabin."

There was no federal inquiry into the wave as a whole. The Army questioned Coyne and filed a Disposition Form dated 23 Nov 1973. J. Allen Hynek investigated at Pascagoula and in Ohio, and in late 1973 he founded the Center for UFO Studies. Some reports collapsed. A Long Beach, Mississippi taxi driver admitted he made up a being with pincers. Near Dayton, three silver-skinned "extraterrestrials" turned out to be teenagers wrapped in aluminum foil. Greenhaw resigned on November 15, 1973.

Sceptics offered wider readings. Philip J. Klass argued that Hickson changed details of his story. Journalist John Lasker suggested that Operation Nickel Grass, the airlift to Israel that began on October 13, flew routes lining up with the sighting corridors. Others blamed media contagion, or the sky-watching stirred by Comet Kohoutek.

For CUFOS, David F. Webb counted 70 humanoid reports from August to December 1973, 55 of them in the continental US. Police, soldiers, pilots and a governor had gone on record. It remains one of the largest UFO waves in American history.