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Project Blue Book unexplained cases summaries with witness names:

Year 1967:

The following paragraphs relate to Project Blue Book's unexplained cases list. For the US Air Force who conducted Project Blue Book, these are the cases that had no "ordinary" explanation.

Introduction:

Along with a short summary, the location and dates, the witness or witnesses name are given. This may surprize many readers, as these names have been censored from the files before they were archived and later available to the public under the FOIA.

Please read the reference information at the end of the page to learn how I found out the witness names. Please refer to my main page on Project Blue book for more information on this USAF project.

Navigation help:

The cases which I have further studied or documented are accompanied by links to the supplemental information. To keep the browsing time reasonably short, I have split the summaries in one file for every year, you need to click on the years underneath to read all the summaries:

Choose: 1947 1948 1949
1950 1951 1952 1953 1954
1955 1956 1957 1958 1959
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

Cases of the year 1967:

Feb. 6, 1967, Odessa, Delaware. 8:45 p.m:

Witnesses: Donald and Marie Guseman.

One large, Saturn-shaped object - 5O' in diameter and 20' high - with two bright lights, a green light on one side and a red light on the other. Hovered motionless over the trees, then slowly moved north and suddenly disappeared after 2 minutes.


Feb. 12, 1967, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 3:40 a.m:

Witness: Mr. Lou Atkinson.

Four fluorescent, football-shaped objects, a dull, almost grey luminous color, flew northeast in a very rigid formation for 4-10 seconds. Made a chirping noise.


Feb. 16, 1967, Stoughton, Wisconsin. 9:11 p.m:

Witness: Miss Lynn Marsh.

One light with faded edges seemed to follow observer in her car for 5-6 minutes.


Feb. 20, 1967, Oxford, Wisconsin. 3:10 a.m:

Witness: USAF veteran/truck driver Stanton Summer.

One orange-red object flew parallel to truck for 2 minutes.


Feb. 27, 1967, Grand Haven, Michigan. 8:19 p.m:

Witnesses: Sheriff Grysen, wife and others.

Large white light, with smaller red and green lights seen to the sides. Made almost instantaneous 90 degrees turn to left, shot out over road and stopped, moving too fast to follow. Sighting lasted 1 hour, 11 minutes.


March 6, 1967, Benton Harbor, Michigan. 12:01 a.m:

Witnesses: Jerome Wolanin, assistant news director of radio station and former policeman, and wife.

One round saucer or oval-shaped object with red, green and yellow lights around bottom rim which pulsated red. Flew level, east to west, and was joined by second object from west. First object opened top, second came over and hovered for 30 seconds and disappeared. Sighting lasted more than 40 minutes. Objects made hissing sound.


March 6, 1967, Galesburg-Moline, Illinois. 4:25 a.m:

Witness: Deputy Sheriff Frank Courson.

One object shaped like a rubber cup which is placed under furniture leg, with a dome set in the cup. Bottom of object spun rapidly, rim pulsated red. Approached witness and passed overhead at low altitude, making a hieeing sound.


March 9, 1967, Galesburg, Illinois. 7:10 p.m:

Witnesses: two housewives.

One object shaped like a pancake with a rounded top, object was pulsating red, with red lights around its rim. Approached witnesses and seemed to explode with a brilliant white light that lasted 10 seconds and almost blinded them. Then it accelerated to the north and disappeared.


March 9, 1967, Onawa, Iowa. 9:05 p.m:

Witness: Jack Lindley. One bright white, saucer-shaped object, as big as a jet airliner, flew straight and fast to the east for 2 minutes.


March 22, 1967, Wapello, Iowa. 10:20 p.m:

Witness: Douglas Eutsler, 15.

Fluorescent, solid, multicolored lights stood still, then flew away at high speed after 1 minute.


March 24, 1967, Belt, Montana. 99 p.m:

Witness: truck driver Ken Williams.

One dome-shaped object, emitting a bright light, landed in a ravine. As the witness approached, it took off and settled back, hidden from the highway. Sighting lasted several minutes.


March 26, 1967, New Winchester, Ohio. 4 p.m:

Witnesses: man, woman, three boys.

One oval object, which looked like copper or brass with the sun shining on it, flew from southeast to northwest with tumbling motion for 30 minutes.


April 17 1967, Jefferson City, Montana, 9 p.m.

A school director is flown over by a huge luminous object in the shape of a world war one helmet. His colleagues observed it, as well as people at the local airport and an airliner pilot.

More information here.


May 17, 1967, Rural Hall, North Carolina. 8:30 p.m:

Witness: Red Ledford.

One round, orange-colored object, similar in size to a small aircraft, zigzagged back and forth over a jet that was heading northeast for 5 minutes.


June 24, 1967, Austin, Texas. 3:12 a.m:

Witness: artist Ray Stanford.

One solid, blue-white, elliptical object flew from northwest to northeast and stopped, seemingly in response to flashlight signal, for 1.5 minutes. The object then proceeded along its original path at high speed and disappeared behind clouds. Sighting lasted 9 minutes.


June 29' 1967, Scotch Plains, New Jersey. 1:30 a.m:

Witness: truck driver Damon Brown.

One oyster-shaped object - 2OO' wide, and 25-30' thick - with a huge red light at each end and one on the bottom, and a row of blue lights along the bottom. Circled m.n aircraft, hovering then moving rapidly, and then followed the witness' car for about 500', veered south and departed at great speed after 8-10 minutes.


July 10, 1967, Lizelia, Mississippi. 5:50 p.m:

Witness: golf pro Harold Washington (Capt, USMC, ret.).

One object with a dome, the top colored gunmetal blue, the bottom the color of old lead. Moved east, crossed the highway tilted upward, moved to the right, accelerated and disappeared into the clouds after 3-5 seconds. Object made a swishing sound.

More information here.


Oct. 18, 1967, Lake Charles, Louisiana. 9 p.m:

Witness: John Herbert.

One bright, fiery ball flashed four times while moving east, just above the tree tops. Sighting lasted 1 minute.


Short discussion and comments:

"Unidentified" says a great deal... and it says almost nothing.

Probably the most controversial aspect of the entire Air Force investigation of UFOs was its handling of individual cases.

The means by which one case was determined to be "identified" and another "unidentified" has no doubt fueled more arguments about Project Blue Book than anything else it did.

For many years, Blue Book's most vocal opponents have insisted that the standards by which cases were allegedly explained were grossly unscientific. Blue Book's goal, according to those who held it low esteem, was to attach some explanation to every case, regardless of logic or common sense. Examples of Blue Book saying a violently maneuvering disc was an aircraft, or of blaming a puzzling radar tracking on a supposedly malfunctioning radar set which it never bothered to check out, are numerous in the popular UFO literature.

And they are even more numerous in the files of Project Blue Book. The urgency with which Blue Book officials tagged answers onto cases without having done the proper investigation is obvious, though not proven. But if the Air Force was so eager to label cases "identified", despite the lack of supporting evidence, then those few cases which it labeled "unidentified" presumably withstood every attempt to apply every other kind of label. And so it may be that those cases are truly unidentifiable in familiar terms.

Indeed, the Air Force defines "unidentifiable" cases as those which "apparently contain all pertinent data necessary to suggest a valid hypothesis concerning the lack of explanation of the report, but the description of the object or its motion cannot be correlated with any known object or phenomenon."

To meet such criteria, a report must obviously come from a reputable source, and it must not bear any resemblance to airplanes, balloons, helicopters, spacecraft, birds, clouds, stars, planets, meteors, comets, electrical phenomena, or anything else known to frequent the air, the sky, or nearby space.

Unfortunately, the Air Force failed to stick to its own rules. Some of the "unidentifiable" cases most certainly can be correlated with known objects or phenomena. But most of them cannot. Moreover, many of the so-called "identified" cases cannot honestly be so correlated. But we are primarily concerned here with those cases which Project Blue Book openly admits it tried to explain and failed.

The amount of detail in these cases varies enormously. Some cases - frequently those which were well publicized at the time of the event - contain considerable information, while others are vague and seriously incomplete. Project Blue Book generally placed the blame for such incompleteness on the witnesses, but it should take its own share of the responsibility. In thousands of cases, there is no completed questionnaire in the Project files, nor even any indication that one was sent to the witness. And in most of the instances where a questionnaire was filled out, it was never followed up to get more complete answers to questions which the witnesses failed to deal with properly. For much of the life of Project Blue Book and its predecessors, there was no satisfactory questionnaire at all. And one of those used for a lengthy period was so badly organized that a witness should not be held to blame for giving incomplete answers.

Yet, despite all the roadblocks, many reports are sufficiently complete to tell a pretty clear story of a puzzling experience. With this data now available, anyone can look at Project Blue Book's "unidentified" UFO reports and make up his own mind.

References:

The above case summaries are from the work of Don Berliner, who compiled a listing of the Project Bluebook "unknowns". In January, 1974, he visited the U.S. Air Force Archives at Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, Alabama, to review the files of Project Blue Book as the first step toward writing a book on the subject.

In a full week, he read all the "unexplained" cases in the original files and made extensive notes, including the names and other identifying information on all witnesses where given. The cooperation of the staff of the Archives was excellent, and no restrictions were placed on his work.

A few months later, the files were withdrawn from public view so they could be prepared for transfer to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. This process involved making a Xerox copy of almost 30 file drawers of material, blacking out the names and other identifiers of all witnesses, and then microfilming the censored Xerox copy. The microfilm has been available to the public at the National Archives since 1976. The original Project Blue Book files remain under lock and key at the Archives.

On almost every page of the 12,000+ case files, there are big black marks where information that could be used to cross-check Project Blue Book's controversial work has been censored.

This includes the names of witnesses to widely-publicized cases, and even names in newspaper clippings!

As it was perfectly legal for him to copy witness' names when he visited the Air Force Archives, those names can be found in this report of 585 (less 13 missing) unexplained cases. And since the Privacy Act, which motivated the Air Force to censor the files in the first place, does not apply to reporters or anyone else outside the Government, they can be used as the reader pleases.

Inasmuch as the book he planned to write has never further than the manuscript stage, he saw no reason to keep this information under wraps any longer, thinking that perhaps it will encourage others to re-investigate cases and make the results known.

This is why I published here all the summaries of these more than 700 cases, and publish a French translation for the French speaking UFO researchers.

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This page was last updated on March 9, 2005.