1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:19,280 The following program presents theories about an historical event that is shrouded in mystery. 2 00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:25,000 It contains archival footage, reenactments and dramatizations which invite you, the viewer, 3 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:30,920 to draw your own conclusions. 4 00:00:30,920 --> 00:00:36,080 Nearly 40 years ago, on an early December evening, something strange is spotted in the 5 00:00:36,080 --> 00:00:43,360 sky above the village of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. 6 00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:48,320 Radiating off for the back or side was a blue light, much like a welder's light. 7 00:00:48,320 --> 00:00:52,880 Something went across the sky, it was just like a big far bowl, and it plunged into the 8 00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:53,880 ground. 9 00:00:53,880 --> 00:01:04,080 It scared me, it really scared me. 10 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:09,160 Some believe they have witnessed a UFO crash. 11 00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:14,400 They say local officials and the military tried to conceal the mysterious object. 12 00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:21,640 There were army trucks, cars, they had the rifles, all kind of military people that were 13 00:01:21,640 --> 00:01:22,640 coming in. 14 00:01:22,640 --> 00:01:32,920 When the military walked up in front of my car, I was told not to go into the woods. 15 00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:41,320 But since 1965, the US government has maintained that nothing at all came down outside Kecksburg. 16 00:01:41,320 --> 00:01:46,400 Others contend that natural science can account for the eyewitness reports. 17 00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:52,240 What people saw was a very bright fireball meteor over Lake Erie. 18 00:01:52,360 --> 00:01:54,680 This was an intensely bright object. 19 00:01:54,680 --> 00:01:58,960 Why do people have so many different interpretations of the same event? 20 00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:04,840 The Project Bluebook file on the event basically said that the search continued until about 21 00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:08,320 2 a.m. that nothing was found. 22 00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:14,680 Skeptics claim these explanations are part of a conspiracy to cover up the truth. 23 00:02:14,680 --> 00:02:20,720 Something landed, or something came down through those trees and hit the ground. 24 00:02:20,720 --> 00:02:25,760 I wouldn't, our own government, come out and tell us that was a satellite or a missile. 25 00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:29,240 It was Russian or one of our own. 26 00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:36,040 Now I'm beginning to wonder what it actually was. 27 00:02:36,040 --> 00:02:39,800 So what was so important down in those woods that the military didn't want those people 28 00:02:39,800 --> 00:02:43,680 to see? 29 00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:49,040 These are American citizens who deserve this information, who have every right to this 30 00:02:49,120 --> 00:02:52,120 information. 31 00:02:52,120 --> 00:02:58,040 Right down through here, right down through here. 32 00:02:58,040 --> 00:03:01,120 See, this wasn't here, this is all grown in. 33 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:03,120 This was an open field like this. 34 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:05,120 And that went down. 35 00:03:05,120 --> 00:03:09,880 79-year-old Bill Bullybush is a lifelong resident of the Kecksburg area. 36 00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:16,480 For more than 20 years, he kept a secret from his neighbors in this small rural community 37 00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:23,560 that one December night, he believes he saw an unidentified flying object over Kecksburg. 38 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:29,560 Little did he know that many of his fellow citizens believe they saw the same thing. 39 00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:31,560 Nobody changed my mind. 40 00:03:31,560 --> 00:03:34,560 I know what I was saying. 41 00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:41,560 That was it. 42 00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:44,560 December 9th, 1965. 43 00:03:44,560 --> 00:03:50,880 It's about 4.30 p.m. just before sunset in Kecksburg, which is about 45 miles southeast 44 00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:54,880 of Pittsburgh. 45 00:03:54,880 --> 00:04:00,040 Bill Bullybush has just come home from work. 46 00:04:00,040 --> 00:04:06,040 As his wife prepares dinner, Bullybush heads outside to work on his pride and joy, a 1964 47 00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:08,040 Chevy Corvair. 48 00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:14,040 He listens to the car's CV radio while he tinkers under the dash. 49 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:21,040 And I heard guys from Ohio talking on there, and they were jabbering, they were coming 50 00:04:21,040 --> 00:04:22,040 east. 51 00:04:22,040 --> 00:04:26,040 And they said that they seen this thing too going east, you know, and they wondered what 52 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:28,040 it was. 53 00:04:28,040 --> 00:04:30,040 Bullybush suddenly hears a hissing sound. 54 00:04:30,040 --> 00:04:35,040 He looks up, catching a glimpse of a glowing object in the sky. 55 00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:42,040 To get a better look, he gets out of his car and can plainly see the bright object overhead. 56 00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:45,040 I watched it. 57 00:04:45,040 --> 00:04:47,040 It was just like a big far bowl. 58 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:49,040 It was headed towards the mountain. 59 00:04:49,040 --> 00:04:51,040 It came back a pretty good piece. 60 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:54,040 And the first thing I knew, it made a U-turn. 61 00:04:54,040 --> 00:05:00,040 And when down in the Kecksburg, down in the woods there. 62 00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:07,040 Less than two miles away, 16-year-old Robert Blystone sits on the back porch of his parents' home. 63 00:05:07,040 --> 00:05:10,040 He also spots the strange light. 64 00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:13,040 It was just a round far bowl. 65 00:05:13,040 --> 00:05:19,040 You know, flames all around it with these different cow vapors behind it. 66 00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:24,040 And it just starts slowing down, like it's being controlled. 67 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:28,040 And the next thing I know, it's beyond the hill where I can't see it in the world. 68 00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:33,040 But then I start seeing smoke dust coming up out of the woods. 69 00:05:33,040 --> 00:05:36,040 So I kind of fear it kind of crashed. 70 00:05:38,040 --> 00:05:46,040 Across town, Bill Bullybush jumps into his corvair and drives to the Kecksburg woods. 71 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:59,040 At the top of the hill overlooking the woods, Bullybush stops, then turns on his parking lights so he can see into the valley. 72 00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:05,040 A strong smell of sulfur permeates the air. 73 00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:10,040 As Bullybush makes his way down the hill, he hears a sizzling sound. 74 00:06:11,040 --> 00:06:13,040 I could see it down in the valley there. 75 00:06:13,040 --> 00:06:19,040 And that's where it landed, right in there, and knocked top of the trees out and everything else. 76 00:06:19,040 --> 00:06:24,040 So I stood there for, well, I'll say, 15 minutes looking at it. 77 00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:33,040 Meanwhile, 12 miles away in nearby Greensburg, the switchboard at radio station WHJB jumps to life. 78 00:06:33,040 --> 00:06:36,040 WHJB, could you hold on one second? 79 00:06:37,040 --> 00:06:41,040 Office manager Mabel Mesa answers the sudden flurry of phone calls. 80 00:06:41,040 --> 00:06:46,040 People were telling me something fell in Kecksburg and somebody said it was a ball of fire. 81 00:06:46,040 --> 00:06:52,040 Somebody said it was a plane wreck. There were just a number of stories that kept coming in. 82 00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:54,040 The phones just kept ringing. 83 00:06:54,040 --> 00:06:59,040 When Mabel fields a call from someone claiming to have seen a UFO outside Kecksburg, 84 00:06:59,040 --> 00:07:03,040 she hands the phone to John Murphy, the station's news director. 85 00:07:04,040 --> 00:07:06,040 I said, here, you take this one. 86 00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:10,040 John Murphy, all right, what would you say? 87 00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:15,040 And he came back and he said to me, he said, this is a big one, kid, I'm going to Kecksburg. 88 00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:19,040 Camera. Thanks, kid. See you later. 89 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:32,040 Back at the crash site, Bill Bullybush is trying to decide whether to move closer to the smoldering object partially embedded in the ground. 90 00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:39,040 The color of it was like a burnt orange. It was burnt from the front, cleared to the back. 91 00:07:40,040 --> 00:07:46,040 And I could see this ring around the back of it. And it looked like Egyptian writing on the back of it. 92 00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:52,040 There was no windows in it, no seams, no rivet marking, it was just a solid piece. 93 00:07:52,040 --> 00:07:59,040 Bullybush fears the smoking object may explode. So after 15 minutes, he retreats. 94 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:06,040 On the way to his car, he hears curious residents already gathering outside the woods. 95 00:08:06,040 --> 00:08:10,040 Bullybush climbs into his corvair and returns home. 96 00:08:14,040 --> 00:08:21,040 Within an hour, the area has been cordoned off by a growing number of military personnel and local officials. 97 00:08:21,040 --> 00:08:25,040 They refuse to let onlookers get closer to the mysterious object. 98 00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:32,040 Though they have a limited view, the group can see a plume of blue smoke rising from the forest. 99 00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:42,040 19-year-old Bill Weaver is out for a joyride in Kecksburg when he hears a radio bulletin describing a strange light in the sky. 100 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:53,040 Intrigued, he heads to the south side of the woods, an area that has not been secured by the military. 101 00:08:56,040 --> 00:09:01,040 Weaver finds a handful of people there, peering into the wooded valley. 102 00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:08,040 We thought it was a Russian satellite at first, but at 19-years-old I was still curious. 103 00:09:08,040 --> 00:09:15,040 Actually, I went back in there, was out of curiosity to see if there was something that did land there. 104 00:09:15,040 --> 00:09:21,040 In the waning evening light, Weaver says that he and the others can barely make out the object below. 105 00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:25,040 It looked like it had plowed into the ground somewhat. 106 00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:32,040 Radiating off, I don't know if it was the front or the back or side, it was a blue light, much like a welder's light. 107 00:09:32,040 --> 00:09:37,040 It gets real bright and then it gets dull. It would go back and forth. 108 00:09:38,040 --> 00:09:45,040 As Weaver and the others try to get a better look, he says officials move them further back, away from the woods. 109 00:09:52,040 --> 00:10:00,040 Around 6.30pm, Bill Bullibush returns to the scene, this time with his 7-year-old son, Ricky. 110 00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:06,040 I never seen so many people and the army was there. I couldn't figure out how the army got there so quick. 111 00:10:07,040 --> 00:10:10,040 The army kept everybody away. 112 00:10:14,040 --> 00:10:20,040 About an hour later, W.H.J.B. newsman John Murphy arrives on the scene. 113 00:10:20,040 --> 00:10:25,040 He sneaks into the woods and secretly takes a few photographs of the strange object. 114 00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:34,040 Accounts differ, but those close to Murphy believe some key photographs are confiscated by officials. 115 00:10:38,040 --> 00:10:41,040 He begins recording statements from a number of people. 116 00:10:41,040 --> 00:10:46,040 What you are about to hear are excerpts of the actual interviews Murphy conducted. 117 00:10:51,040 --> 00:10:54,040 A spy on fire? Can you point out what part of the woods you saw there? 118 00:10:54,040 --> 00:10:55,040 A spy on fire. 119 00:10:55,040 --> 00:10:57,040 Down in there. Was there any smoke coming from it? 120 00:10:57,040 --> 00:10:58,040 Yeah. 121 00:10:59,040 --> 00:11:04,040 Murphy calls in a bulletin to his colleague Stan Wolholt, W.H.J.B.'s evening disjunkie. 122 00:11:04,040 --> 00:11:09,040 John Murphy, I'm out in the woods here outside of Kecksburg. It's bright and there's smoke everywhere. 123 00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:13,040 Okay John, I'll give you a... you're gonna be online in like 30 seconds, okay? 124 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:17,040 John didn't like to go on the air if he wasn't certain with something. 125 00:11:17,040 --> 00:11:19,040 He didn't like to speculate. 126 00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:23,040 He gave us different opinions on what it could have been. 127 00:11:24,040 --> 00:11:29,040 As the evening went on, people really became anxious to find out what really happened. 128 00:11:30,040 --> 00:11:37,040 Then we had other radio stations and TV stations and so forth calling about this thing that had landed in Kecksburg. 129 00:11:38,040 --> 00:11:50,040 A growing military contingent continues to clear the area of onlookers as Murphy tries to collect more eyewitness accounts. 130 00:11:54,040 --> 00:12:03,040 About an hour and a half later at 9 p.m., Bob Gatti, a 22-year-old reporter arrives at the scene from the Greensburg paper, the Tribune Review. 131 00:12:04,040 --> 00:12:14,040 Along the road were state police and there were some military people there and I believe they were army people and they had guns. 132 00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:18,040 They were keeping people from going back into this field. 133 00:12:19,040 --> 00:12:23,040 Robert Blystone is less than a quarter mile from his parents' home. 134 00:12:24,040 --> 00:12:30,040 From there, he sees a flurry of activity. 135 00:12:30,040 --> 00:12:36,040 A large flatbed truck accompanied by army jeeps disappears into the wooded valley. 136 00:12:36,040 --> 00:12:47,040 Almost two hours later, the convoy emerges, but Blystone notices that the flatbed is no longer empty and he sees what the military is trying to hide. 137 00:12:48,040 --> 00:12:58,040 And you can see on the flatbed, a design under the tarp, like a bell shape or an egg-coin shape vehicle. 138 00:12:58,040 --> 00:12:59,040 That was under there. 139 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:04,040 Robert Blystone isn't the only one who sees this strange cargo. 140 00:13:05,040 --> 00:13:18,040 By the next day, several eyewitnesses tell John Murphy, Bob Gatti and others that they saw a strange object in the sky that they believe came to Earth. 141 00:13:21,040 --> 00:13:29,040 The front page of a local paper, the Greensburg Tribune Review, had big headlines on army ropes off the area and identified flying object falls near Kexpert. 142 00:13:29,040 --> 00:13:35,040 But another article in a later edition of the paper suggests that the eyewitnesses are mistaken. 143 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:42,040 In that piece, state troopers say they have recovered, quote, absolutely nothing from the site. 144 00:13:43,040 --> 00:13:51,040 According to at least one researcher, this story and later statements make eyewitnesses suspect a government cover-up. 145 00:13:51,040 --> 00:13:54,040 The question still remains, what was this object? 146 00:13:55,040 --> 00:13:58,040 And we've been trying to track down to get answers to that for many, many years. 147 00:13:58,040 --> 00:14:02,040 The people want to know the truth, they want to know we're alone out there. 148 00:14:10,040 --> 00:14:12,040 December 10th, 1965. 149 00:14:14,040 --> 00:14:21,040 One day after about a dozen people near Kexpert, Pennsylvania, witness what they believe was a UFO crash. 150 00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:30,040 Many are surprised to read in their local paper that government officials have discovered no physical evidence. 151 00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:39,040 They made a thorough search in the woods and there was nothing there and that officially the government was saying now that people had been mistaken, nothing had fallen into the woods. 152 00:14:40,040 --> 00:14:45,040 Stan Gordon is a local UFO researcher who has studied the Kexpert case for nearly 40 years. 153 00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:48,040 He was 16 years old at the time of the incident. 154 00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:54,040 Gordon and others will challenge that conclusion for the next four decades. 155 00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:12,040 In the days following the events of December 9th, local radio station WHJB's news director, John Murphy, gathers the eyewitness accounts he had recorded that night. 156 00:15:13,040 --> 00:15:19,040 The journalist is intrigued by the tapes which indicate that something fell into the woods outside Kexpert. 157 00:15:19,040 --> 00:15:22,040 The following is an excerpt from Murphy's tapes. 158 00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:33,040 To describe the explosion, well I've seen two big, bright flashes on the long streak of water's lake. I think it was a plane. 159 00:15:33,040 --> 00:15:36,040 He decides to produce a documentary about that night. 160 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:38,040 Murphy titles his project. 161 00:15:38,040 --> 00:15:40,040 Object in the Woods. 162 00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:51,040 John had me help him write up a story and he wanted to make sure everything got in there included and he was real excited. 163 00:15:54,040 --> 00:15:57,040 For several days they work on the program. 164 00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:04,040 Murphy also listens to his interviews with local authorities. 165 00:16:08,040 --> 00:16:11,040 I'll write an area this report had come in from. 166 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:20,040 Oh my, as far as Canada, in Ohio, it's been seen all over and these flashes have come all over Northeastern United States. 167 00:16:23,040 --> 00:16:33,040 But just a few days before Object in the Woods is set to air, two men identifying themselves to Mabel Mazza as government agents visit Murphy at the station. 168 00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:42,040 We wanted to let them talk privately so we put them in the FM studio so the men went in there with John and closed the door. 169 00:16:52,040 --> 00:16:55,040 Mabel says the meeting lasts about 30 minutes. 170 00:16:55,040 --> 00:17:02,040 For some reason John Murphy was afraid. He just, I can't talk about it. I cannot talk about it. And he said, just leave me alone. 171 00:17:02,040 --> 00:17:08,040 He sort of lost some of his spark and I have no idea what it was, but it was after the visit of those two men. 172 00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:15,040 But the excitement in John was completely gone. And when I tried to question him on it, he didn't want to talk about it. 173 00:17:15,040 --> 00:17:22,040 Murphy moves ahead with plans to broadcast Object in the Woods. The show airs on WHJB in late December. 174 00:17:22,040 --> 00:17:28,040 But the documentary that listeners hear is not the one Murphy had intended. 175 00:17:28,040 --> 00:17:33,040 Object in the Woods. I say John, that's not what you said the other day. 176 00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:36,040 I said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 177 00:17:36,040 --> 00:17:40,040 The documentary that listeners hear is not the one Murphy had intended. 178 00:17:40,040 --> 00:17:45,040 Object in the Woods. I say John, that's not what you said the other night. 179 00:17:45,040 --> 00:17:52,040 Well, he said, I have to change it. I said, why do you have to change it? But he would never tell me. 180 00:17:52,040 --> 00:18:00,040 When it was aired, it was absolutely not the same documentary as it was prepared. 181 00:18:01,040 --> 00:18:08,040 At the beginning of the broadcast, Murphy advises his audience that his report has been edited. 182 00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:16,040 We regret that part of the program had to be censored and other parts of the program had to be cut out entirely. 183 00:18:16,040 --> 00:18:22,040 Despite his meeting just days before with the men who tell Mabel Mazza they were with the government, 184 00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:29,040 Murphy asserts that there has been no official pressure to alter his production. 185 00:18:30,040 --> 00:18:40,040 This station has not been contacted by any official agency of the state, federal or local government in connection with this program. 186 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:49,040 Murphy instead explains that the program has been changed because some interviewees became nervous about having their statements broadcast. 187 00:18:49,040 --> 00:18:56,040 We received other calls every tonight from some other people who said they had changed their minds now at the last minute 188 00:18:56,040 --> 00:19:01,040 and did not want the statements they had made over this past weekend used on this radio program tonight. 189 00:19:01,040 --> 00:19:12,040 In the years that followed, Murphy never discusses his meeting with the two men or his decision to run the edited version of the documentary. 190 00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:19,040 I don't think John ever became his real self then again because it's something that lingered with him. 191 00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:29,040 Years later, Murphy's ex-wife remembers the importance he placed on the Kecksburg event and the effect it had on him personally. 192 00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:40,040 This is like the story of his lifetime. I mean it's the way he treated it and all of a sudden nothing, not a word. 193 00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:45,040 It was totally unlikable to drop something like that. 194 00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:52,040 She also maintains that authorities confiscated some of the photos Murphy had taken in the woods that night. 195 00:19:52,040 --> 00:19:59,040 I know John had pictures of the object. He told me he did. He wouldn't lie about that. It's too good a story to pass up. 196 00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:07,040 Whatever secrets John Murphy held about that mysterious visit, he took to his grave. 197 00:20:08,040 --> 00:20:16,040 In February of 1969, Murphy was struck and killed by a car on a highway near Ventura, California. 198 00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:26,040 His dad gave me the police reportery. There was too many things in it that didn't make sense. 199 00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:40,040 For the next 20 years, the events of December 9th, 1965, seem to fade from public memory, only occasionally becoming the subject of talk for Kecksburg area residents. 200 00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:47,040 Nevertheless, local researcher Stan Goudin is committed to collecting whatever information he can find. 201 00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:53,040 I would periodically get a relative of somebody who was there that night, somebody knew something else. 202 00:20:53,040 --> 00:21:00,040 Most people that have experiences don't want any publicity. They're afraid of being ridiculed and for various reasons they don't want to go public. 203 00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:09,040 In the mid-1980s, one of Gordon's colleagues unearthed a Project Blue Book report concerning Kecksburg. 204 00:21:10,040 --> 00:21:19,040 The Air Force developed Project Blue Book to investigate all reported UFO sightings and determine if they were a national security threat. 205 00:21:19,040 --> 00:21:30,040 From 1947 until 1969, the study gathered more than 12,000 reports, 700 of which were classified unidentified. 206 00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:39,040 Though the report erroneously cites Acme, Pennsylvania as the location, Gordon knows that it refers to the crash in the Kecksburg woods. 207 00:21:39,040 --> 00:21:52,040 While it's possible that the formerly classified file will finally shed new light on the events of that night, after nearly two decades of waiting, Stan Goudin is not surprised with the military's explanation. 208 00:21:52,040 --> 00:22:01,040 The Project Blue Book report basically states that a search was conducted until about 2 a.m. that only three Air Force personnel were involved in the search and that nothing was found 209 00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:06,040 and that officially people had seen just a bright meteor in the sky that nothing had fallen to the ground that day. 210 00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:16,040 Gordon doubts the veracity of the Blue Book report. He's talked to eyewitnesses who describe a much larger military presence at the scene. 211 00:22:17,040 --> 00:22:28,040 So here you have military personnel coming in to other people's private property, they're preventing other civilians from going down to other people's property to stop you turning them around. 212 00:22:28,040 --> 00:22:33,040 So what was so important down in those woods that the military didn't want those people to see? 213 00:22:35,040 --> 00:22:40,040 Gordon looks for eyewitnesses, but many are reluctant to come forward. 214 00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:49,040 Then, in September of 1988, Stan Goudin gets an indication of what the military may have been hiding. 215 00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:55,040 Through an anonymous tip, he finds truck driver Bill Bullibush, who is now 62 years old. 216 00:22:58,040 --> 00:23:05,040 Bullibush, who Gordon believes may be the first person to see the object, has kept his silence for 23 years. 217 00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:17,040 During that meeting, Gordon takes Bullibush out to the Kecksburg Woods and has him retrace his steps from that night. 218 00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:25,040 He took us down from the top of the meteor road down through the woods, went behind the tree, said this is the tree I stood behind that night, pointed over to the spot. 219 00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:32,040 Bullibush's account matches that of another eyewitness Gordon has interviewed. 220 00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:40,040 Each man independently describes the solid, windowless object with strange writing along the sides. 221 00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:48,040 Bullibush also tells Gordon of the large amount of military personnel, mostly army, he saw that night. 222 00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:56,040 That memory, Bullibush says, has stayed with him because of the impact it seemed to have on his young son, Ricky. 223 00:23:57,040 --> 00:24:05,040 You see an army on a picture in a movie, you know, and that, but to see him out real life at seven years old, it really, really fixed him up. 224 00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:12,040 Gordon believes the strongest evidence that something occurred comes from objective eyewitnesses. 225 00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:23,040 We have not only civilians who report as seeing military personnel, but you also have reporters as eyewitnesses as well who reported seeing military personnel on the scene that evening. 226 00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:26,040 Bob Gatti is one of them. 227 00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:37,040 They had rifles. I come from an army family and I know what an army uniform looks like and I believe it was army. 228 00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:43,040 I'm not sure how many altogether there were. It impressed me at the time that there were quite a few. 229 00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:52,040 I know it was army for one thing because I could see the star on the truck that showed that that was army. 230 00:24:55,040 --> 00:25:05,040 Mabel Mazza, WHJB's office manager, remembers receiving phone calls at the station from people identifying themselves as military authorities that night. 231 00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:20,040 Within about an hour of the phones ringing, I had military personnel call me on the phone and ask me the directions to Keckspark and they wanted to know what I knew and I said, I don't know anything, I'm just taking the phone calls. 232 00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:31,040 They just weren't coming from one direction. They seem to have just all come in at one time from all directions. 233 00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:46,040 In 1990, as the 25th anniversary of the Keckspark event nears, the story garners national media attention. Several of the eyewitness reports that Stan Gordon has uncovered are featured. 234 00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:52,040 The press coverage helps reignite the debate about what really happened in Keckspark. 235 00:25:53,040 --> 00:26:04,040 As I've looked at many of these stories that associate space events, satellites, re-entries, launchings, with UFO reports, I've been struck by how often they are connected. 236 00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:20,040 By 1991, the strange occurrence outside Keckspark, Pennsylvania, more than 25 years before, continues to be the subject of speculation. Could it have been a UFO? 237 00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:33,040 Based on what witnesses described, space consultant James Oberg believes he may have an alternate explanation for the Keckspark object. 238 00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:47,040 They talked about an acorn-shaped object and as a specialist in Soviet space history, I realized that wasn't a bad description of the re-entry capsule on the Soviet Venus probe. 239 00:26:51,040 --> 00:27:10,040 In 1965, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, tracked Cosmos 96. NORAD knew that the satellite's Venus probe re-entered the atmosphere the same day as the Keckspark event, but the Soviets didn't acknowledge that the mission failed. 240 00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:21,040 Cosmos 96 was a Russian probe to Venus that got stuck in its parking orbit. The rocket failed. It never got any further. It fell back to Earth and burned up. 241 00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:39,040 Cosmos 96 was part of the USSR's Venera project, a 22-year study of the planet Venus. NORAD lacked the technology to determine exactly where the craft landed, a mystery that the agency says remains to this day. 242 00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:51,040 Oberg thinks the Keckspark object could be Cosmos 96. To test his theory, he seeks out the Air Force tracking data from December 9th, 1965. 243 00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:57,040 The Air Force keeps very detailed historical records of satellites in space. 244 00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:12,040 Oberg believes they may be the key to solving the Keckspark mystery. But when Oberg examines the data, he finds a key inconsistency between the Cosmos probe and what happened in Keckspark. 245 00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:21,040 At the time of the Keckspark sightings, the flight path of Cosmos 96 was nowhere near Pennsylvania. 246 00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:32,040 People around Keckspark reported seeing the fireball in the early evening, around 4.45 p.m., as much as 13 hours after the Cosmos 96 re-entry. 247 00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:42,040 While the probe was believed to have entered the atmosphere over central Canada, NORAD now thinks it could have been as far away as the Indian Ocean. 248 00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:52,040 Oberg maintains it is possible that the Air Force intentionally released misleading data on Cosmos 96. 249 00:28:53,040 --> 00:29:03,040 Perhaps if it was a satellite and it did come down, the Air Force released false tracking data to camouflage this fact. 250 00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:12,040 Oberg asserts that in the tense Cold War atmosphere, U.S. officials would have had every reason to keep such a find under wraps. 251 00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:23,040 But by the year 2000, when he has access to more accurate data, Oberg finally dismisses the Cosmos 96 theory. 252 00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:31,040 The coincidence of the satellite coming back to Earth the same day that this object was found in Pennsylvania, it was very tempting. 253 00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:37,040 Later on, better tracking data allowed us to see that this was not, in fact, a connection. It was a pure coincidence. 254 00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:43,040 Still, he maintains that other satellites can't be entirely ruled out. 255 00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:53,040 There are candidates from spacecraft, Russian and our spacecraft. The 60s was a period of very intense aerospace activity. 256 00:29:53,040 --> 00:30:04,040 Lots of stuff in the air, lots of it falling out of the air, and a lot of that really, really secret. Stuff that took years to come out if it ever did come out. 257 00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:16,040 It is possible, Oberg asserts, that a piece of a craft often referred to as orbital debris or space junk survived entry into the Earth's atmosphere and landed near Kecksburg. 258 00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:21,040 People don't realize how much of the space junk that fell back to Earth survived. 259 00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:28,040 We have struts and beams and insulation fragments that have re-entered the atmosphere. Most satellite burns up. 260 00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:37,040 These pieces survive, hit the ground, and those pieces that did hit the ground would be of immense interest to military intelligence officers. 261 00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:43,040 Still, Oberg considers that an unlikely scenario. 262 00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:53,040 For Stan Gordon, the space junk theory still fails to fully explain what eyewitnesses reported and what he's come to believe. 263 00:30:54,040 --> 00:31:01,040 I'm convinced beyond any doubt that an object of unknown origin did fall from the sky and apparently the military came and recovered it. 264 00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:10,040 We've heard everything one witness told me years ago that a Gemini capsule had been expelled in the area that night, even though no information on that has ever been found. 265 00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:19,040 One witness indicated that he had information that the object was a projectile fired from a giant gun from a railroad car in Canada. 266 00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:30,040 We have something unidentified and the more we eliminate the possible options for it, the more mysterious it becomes and the more intriguing the question becomes as to what it actually was. 267 00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:40,040 Leslie Kane is a journalist working with the Coalition for Freedom of Information, a group funded by the SciFi Channel that has taken on the Kecksburg case. 268 00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:46,040 We have scientists down there that have actually been able to prove that there was something in those woods that came down. 269 00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:57,040 Still, in 1992, an amateur astronomer unearthed long forgotten evidence, which he believes settles the matter once and for all. 270 00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:04,040 We have evidence. I think Kecksburg is a closed case. 271 00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:21,040 In September of 1990, a nationally broadcast television program features a segment on the Kecksburg story. 272 00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:28,040 Robert Young, an amateur astronomer and lecturer at a Pennsylvania planetarium, becomes intrigued by the case. 273 00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:35,040 He delves into newspaper articles and reexamines eyewitness reports. 274 00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:42,040 He later publishes an article declaring that there's nothing unsolved about the Kecksburg case. 275 00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:47,040 The elements of this story might suggest that there's something unusual happen. 276 00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:53,040 The armed troops, an armed convoy, the object itself. 277 00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:57,040 These stories only come from a very tiny handful of people. 278 00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:05,040 Young suspects that those early reports from the night of December 9th may have simply been blown out of proportion. 279 00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:13,040 Hoping to learn more, he tracks down Ed Meyers, who was Kecksburg's fire chief in 1965. 280 00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:21,040 Ed Meyers told me that while there was a search and a lot of people were there, that nothing was recovered. 281 00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:24,040 And there weren't large numbers of military people. 282 00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:30,040 Young collects 150 eyewitness accounts from newspapers and his own interviews. 283 00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:36,040 They indicate that the official explanation is the closest to the truth. 284 00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:43,040 That nothing fell to earth and there was no major military presence in Kecksburg that night. 285 00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:49,040 Meyers also accounts for the blue lights seen in the woods. 286 00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:59,040 There are some high school kids who were running through the woods flashing a camera strobe which created blue flashing lights. 287 00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:13,040 Then, in early 1992, Young discovers an academic paper published in the August 1967 Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. 288 00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:24,040 Von Del Chamberlain is one of the two authors who suggests that the light seen over Kecksburg was a fireball meteor. 289 00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:30,040 A celestial occurrence notable for its intense brightness and visibility over a large distance. 290 00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:42,040 It was seen over several states. It was very well observed throughout lower Michigan and especially southwest Ontario over by Windsor. 291 00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:54,040 Chamberlain and his colleague were able to map out the trajectory of the fireball by using these two photos of the objects dust trail taken by photographers in Michigan. 292 00:34:55,040 --> 00:35:06,040 We were able to use these because the photos were taken from two different places. They had landscape features so that with the photographers we could go back to the place where the camera was. 293 00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:17,040 By witnesses Bill Bullybush and Robert Blystone have maintained that the objects seemed to make a controlled landing into the Kecksburg woods. 294 00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:24,040 Von Del Chamberlain says these accounts are likely an illusion that's easily explained. 295 00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:44,040 Typically when a bright fireball occurs people who are out on the periphery of its observation will believe they know where it came down because the fireball is still glowing, still bright in the sky when it goes to or even beyond the visible horizon. 296 00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:49,040 So it will look like it came down beyond the nearby buildings or trees. 297 00:35:50,040 --> 00:36:01,040 Chamberlain says if a meteor makes contact with the Earth's surface at all it can be several hundred miles away from where eyewitnesses believe it came down. 298 00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:09,040 Chamberlain and Young conclude that the Kecksburg event was most likely a typical fireball meteor. 299 00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:16,040 But what are the descriptions of the object making a series of S-turns over Kecksburg? 300 00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:26,040 Well the trail is left by dust particles in the atmosphere by the meteor that's coming in. 301 00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:32,040 The winds move the trail around as if you're looking at the contrail of an airplane a few minutes later. 302 00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:40,040 And this contrail was visible for twenty minutes some people reported a half hour that they could see it in the western sky. 303 00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,040 So lots of chance for the thing to assume other shapes. 304 00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:52,040 Leslie Cain however maintains that this argument ignores what some witnesses say was a significant military response. 305 00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:57,040 In the military it wouldn't behave like that if a meteorite had come down. 306 00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:02,040 I mean it would have been known fairly quickly and they could have let the media know that this is what it was. 307 00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:12,040 And Stan Gorten a UFO researcher who has spent nearly thirty years investigating the Kecksburg case says the eyewitness reports provide compelling evidence. 308 00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:17,040 I've interviewed hundreds of people who have director in to acknowledge about the case. 309 00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:22,040 And it's not been easy to find some of these witnesses because the majority of them didn't want any publicity. 310 00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:30,040 And what's so intriguing is the fact that so many of their statements and information they have verify other people's accounts. 311 00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:37,040 In 1992 Robert Young challenges Gorten to re-examine the facts. 312 00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:44,040 I sent Stan Gorten a copy of the chain growing cross paper and we had the photographs. 313 00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:48,040 And I asked him for his comment. How does this affect this particular story? 314 00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:50,040 Never heard from him again. 315 00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:57,040 But Gorten claims that Robert Young refuses to accept the eyewitness accounts of credible people. 316 00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:06,040 Investigative journalist Leslie Cain has pursued the case since 2002 and believes it's not a meteor. 317 00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:09,040 There's too much information that doesn't add up. 318 00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:21,040 In 2003 production began on a television program about the Kecksburg UFO. 319 00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:29,040 The sci-fi channel funded CFI or the Coalition for Freedom of Information to research the Kecksburg incident. 320 00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:34,040 It's time that CFI presses for the release of related government documents. 321 00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:36,040 They have every right to this information. 322 00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:40,040 Leslie Cain is the group's co-founder. 323 00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:45,040 She describes her mission as that of an objective investigator, not a UFO hunter. 324 00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:52,040 I'm trying to stay right on track as a journalist that all it means is that we don't know what the object is. 325 00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:59,040 Cain doubts the official explanation that the object residents saw over Kecksburg was a meteor. 326 00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:08,040 I'm sure there are many, there are scientists and others that believe that that's the most likely explanation for this event in 1965. 327 00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:15,040 The problem is that there are so many eyewitness accounts that describe a physical object coming down. 328 00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:19,040 She believes that the reports of eyewitnesses are key. 329 00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:27,040 Among them is Bill Weaver, who remembers a heavy military presence in and around the woods that night. 330 00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:35,040 You know, these people that are saying that nothing happened that night, they never seen any military there. 331 00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:39,040 Either one, they weren't there or two, they aren't telling the truth. 332 00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:42,040 Because this did happen. 333 00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:48,040 In an effort to determine scientifically if an object came down in the woods outside Kecksburg, 334 00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:54,040 the TV program includes a study by Dr. Ray Hicks of West Virginia University. 335 00:39:56,040 --> 00:40:02,040 A professor of forestry, Dr. Hicks examines the rings on a core sample of damaged trees there. 336 00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:09,040 He studied those trees and went inside them and he was able to document that this was actually caused by something physical 337 00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:14,040 and he was able to date the damage back to the year 1965. 338 00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:23,040 This is very, very significant proof or close to proof, smoking gun as it were, that there was a physical object that came down. 339 00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,040 And yes indeed, that object is an unidentified flying object. 340 00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:34,040 The result of Dr. Hicks' testing appears to support the eyewitness account of Bill Bullybush. 341 00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:42,040 You can see where it laid the trees over on the tops, knocks the top right out. They were all bent the way it came in. 342 00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:48,040 Cain and CFI also reexamine the Cosmos 96 claim. 343 00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:54,040 She retained the assistance of Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris. 344 00:40:55,040 --> 00:41:02,040 Johnson reconfirms that Cosmos 96, a failed Russian space mission, was not what fell in Kecksburg. 345 00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:08,040 In an email to the History Channel, Johnson says he searched the US satellite catalog. 346 00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:16,040 It revealed that Cosmos 96 was the only cataloged object to reenter on December 9th, 1965. 347 00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,040 It was not a missile, it was not an aircraft. 348 00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:29,040 I thought that was a very, very powerful statement because he said everything is cataloged even if it's a somewhat sensitive military experiment. 349 00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:42,040 Robert Young dismisses the significance that Cain and others place on eyewitness accounts and points to the photos as the strongest pieces of evidence that the Kecksburg object was a meteor. 350 00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:49,040 They don't have anything except some stories against physical evidence, the pictures. 351 00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:55,040 Over the years, the media attention has taken its toll on this rural community. 352 00:41:56,040 --> 00:42:03,040 Some say a definite rift remains between those in Kecksburg who believe something fell from the sky and those who don't. 353 00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:11,040 You got relatives who, one was involved, the other one says this was bull nothing happened that night. 354 00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:14,040 Some don't talk to each other, some still don't talk today. 355 00:42:15,040 --> 00:42:20,040 Bill Weaver remembers feeling pressured not to talk about his experiences that night. 356 00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:31,040 It was just something that's secret. You'd be a damn near communist, you know, to talk about something like this. 357 00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:42,040 CFI continues to press for documents from agencies that might shed light on whatever happened in Kecksburg on December 9th, 1965. 358 00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:50,040 We are proceeding with both Air Force and Army investigations and we have every intention of filing lawsuits against those agencies. 359 00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,040 At a certain point if we do not receive satisfactory response from them. 360 00:42:54,040 --> 00:43:05,040 Kane cites the example of Project Blue Book as evidence demonstrating that the military is unwilling to reveal the truth. 361 00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:15,040 At one point there's an interesting section in there in which they say that the media has been calling and the head of Project Blue Book says, 362 00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:21,040 you can tell them it's a meteor but the document goes on to say, but we're still investigating the case. 363 00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:33,040 With Leslie Kane, CFI is a participant in a suit pending with NASA in hopes of forcing the space agency to release any documents it may have on the Kecksburg case. 364 00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:44,040 A previous request for documents in 2003 yielded 36 pages of what CFI calls irrelevant material. 365 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:52,040 These are American citizens who deserve this information, who have every right to this information. 366 00:43:53,040 --> 00:44:01,040 Many of those who were in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania on the night of December 9th, 1965 agree. 367 00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:13,040 I'd really like to know what did come down because I can tell you it was no meteor, that's for short, because it was being controlled. 368 00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:16,040 It was somebody that saw it to tell you that. 369 00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:25,040 I don't believe the government will ever tell us the truth and tell generations down the road. My grandchildren may not. 370 00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:38,040 The trouble is we're all suspicious and if their evidence is that nothing occurred, how do they prove to us that nothing occurred? 371 00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,040 Will we believe them? I wonder about that. 372 00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:49,040 The preceding program presented theories about an historical event that is shrouded in mystery. 373 00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:56,040 It contained archival footage, reenactments and dramatizations which invite you, the viewer, to draw your own conclusions. 374 00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,040 It's truly an unidentified line object. 375 00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,040 The government has not told the truth about UFOs. 376 00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:06,040 Sightings tend to come in waves. 377 00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:08,040 There was definitely a camera. 378 00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:11,040 Most of the cases are never reported. 379 00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:14,040 It was not anything from this earth.