Does This Look Like Swamp Gas to You? Let's Revisit this Case!
The full story makes this explanation even more bizarre and unbelievable!
On the nights of March 20 and 21, 1966, a famous UFO event took place in Dexter, Michigan that you've probably heard at least a little about. Yes, this is the famous Project Blue Book "Swamp Gas" case.
The real story
Rather than rehash the story as told in the media, or online in summary form, let's get right to the best source of original data as detailed in the Berliner and Brad Sparks reports. These reports are comprehensive catalogs in PDF form covering up to 1,700 unknown UFO cases, many gleaned from Project Blue Book. They did great research so we can get the best original story line as possible.
Here are their write-ups, with no editing on my part...
" March 20, 1966. Dexter, Mich. 8-8:30 p.m. Frank Mannor and his son, Ronald [plus 40-60 others including 12 policemen ?] saw hovering over a swamp about 1,500 ft away a brown luminous car-sized object, with a "scaly" or "waffled" [or "quilted"] surface, cone-shaped on top, flat on bottom, or football-shaped, and 2 bluish-green lights on right and left edges that turned bright red and helped illuminate object in between. Lights blinked out and object reappeared instantly across the swamp 1,500 ft away. The whole object lit up with a yellowish glow at one point and also rose up 500 ft then descended again. After 2-3 mins of viewing, when 2 flashlights appeared in the distance the object seemed to respond by flying away at high speed directly over the witnesses with a whistling sound like a rifle bullet ricocheting. Object remained in the swamp area for 1/2 hr. [Various other sightings in the area by police shortly afterward.]"
And this write-up covers the sightings the next evening about 50 miles away...
" March 21, 1966. Hillsdale, Mich. 10:32, 11:05 p.m.-4:30 a.m. 17 Hillsdale College students including Barbara Kohn [Cohn?], Cynthia Poffenberger, Jo Wilson and Sara Robecheck [sp?], saw a football-shaped object with redgreen-white pulsating lights descend from the NE pass close to their dorm then disappear to the S as if crashing to the ground, then return at 11:05 p.m. William Van Horn, Civil Defense Director and rated commercial pilot, and police arrived and conducted a ground search 1/2 to 2 miles away to the E but found nothing until Van Horn reached the college dorm, 2nd floor, where he, using binoculars, and [87?] students saw a maneuvering lighted 20-25 ft object on or near the ground about 1,500-1,700 ft away to the E over the college baseball field and (Slayton) Arboretum, no swamp anywhere in the vicinity, with a dirty-white light on the left and dim orange on the right, which brightened after 10 mins to white and red and began to rise at a rate of 25-30 ft/min to a height of 100-150 ft (about 3-6 mins), stopped momentarily then descended and repeated the motion 4 times from 11:30 p.m. to 1:45 a.m. At one point on a descent a "convexed" surface (between?) the lights could be seen. Radiation was later detected at the landing area about 330 to 600 microroentgens/hr [milliroentgens/hr ?], roughly 10x-20x background level, and possible boron contamination."
"Swamp Gas" ... Really?
A careful study of these sighting descriptions sure punches some holes in the "swamp gas" explanation that Dr. J. Allen Hynek stated for the press at the time. Sounds were heard, an object zoomed past overhead, there were multiple witnesses describing surface texture and other fine details of the objects, additional reliable witnesses (police) described on object hovering in an area where no swamps were anywhere nearby, and unexplained high levels of radiation were detected.
To be fair, Dr. Hynek was under pressure by U.S. Air Force authorities he was under contract with to let the steam out of this sighting as quick as possible. Over time, Dr. Hynek became disillusioned with the dismissive approach by the Air Force, eventually expressing regret about his decision to go with this hastily contrived swamp gas explanation.
More about Project Blue Book
The staff at UFO-Track's Project Blue Book Research is currently publishing several videos that analyze the residual "unknown" cases (several hundred of them!) that Project Blue Book barely mentioned in their final report.
The conclusions expressed by the Condon committee in 1968 in the final report of Project Blue Book were highly dismissive of what they found while studying thousands of cases, mostly between the years 1947 and 1968. Some of the case explanations have been highly debated by UFO researchers, where simplistic explanations of birds, balloons, planets, and so on were given for the majority of the cases. This "swamp gas" event is one of those cases.
The overlooked cases
Instead of focusing on these debatably explained cases, the new UFO-Track book brings to light some fascinating analysis of the several hundred cases that the Blue Book researchers admit they couldn't explain, and that they more or less swept under the rug from public scrutiny. These high-quality unexplained cases have been geographically and chronologically sorted to bring out trends and patterns.
John has been passionate about discovering the truth about UFOs, ever since witnessing strange objects many years ago. As a UFO investigator, John authored the book How to Investigate UFOs Using Your Smart Phone .
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