Reports from the Void: 'Older UFO Story'

A 13-second exposure from 2019 that captured the International Space Station, Jupiter, and the Milky Way. *(NASA/Bill Dunford)*

The Singular Fortean Society received the following email with “Older UFO Story” in the subject line on July 27th, 2021.

I live in Michigan, and at the time, this was in Ypsilanti Township. While in middle school at about the age of 14, I was doing some stargazing with a small telescope—I was taking an astronomy class—and noticed an object that was a pinpoint of light with the naked eye but through the scope it was an obvious object that was slowly tumbling, obviously in orbit. At the time, I thought it was Skylab (the first United States space station, launched by NASA, and occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974) because of the shape.
An older neighbor came over and asked what I was looking at since I'd been out on the porch for three nights in a row. I told him I was watching Skylab—he pointed out that Skylab isn't visible at this latitude, so he went home and got his more powerful scope to look at it. And it did look like Skylab but without the solar panels or the umbrella that was over it.
The fifth night that I was watching it, my neighbor on his second night, we saw small puffs of gas coming from one end with a little light shooting out from the end of it after each puff, five in total. We watched these little lights descend to I'm guessing about 1,000 feet or cloud level. There were five of them and one passed directly overhead. They were silver balls, like pinball balls. They cut through the clouds leaving a vapor trail and were virtually silent.
My neighbor's brother was in the Air Force in Ohio at Wright Patterson, so he said he's going to call his brother about this. The next night, his wife stopped by and wondered if we had seen him because he was gone when she got home. I finally saw him a few days later and asked what he found out from his brother.
He told me, I'll never forget the exact words, " I didn't see anything and neither did you."
I asked what about the silver balls, the thing in orbit.
"They were never there and I didn't see anything."
All this happened in 1974, during the winter, I don't remember the exact month.

Investigator Tobias Wayland replied to the email in an attempt to gather more information, but never received any response.

Anomalous satellites, while rare, do appear in UFO lore. Most notably, a persistent conspiracy theory exists which posits that just such an object, known as the Black Knight satellite, has orbited our planet for hundreds of years.

Believers in the Black Knight suspect that it is extraterrestrial in nature and was sent to Earth to monitor our activity.

However, evidence of the satellite’s existence is scant; a photograph showing a dark object taken during the first International Space Station (ISS) mission in 1998, which some believe shows the Black Knight, was explained by astronaut Jerry Ross as a thermal cover that had come loose from its tether and floated away.

The 1998 photograph that some believe shows the Black Knight satellite. *(NASA)*

Despite the questionable validity of the Black Knight satellite’s existence, alien probes sent to explore and monitor our planet remain popular among many in the UFO field.

Researcher T. Roy Dutton introduced his Astronautical Theory in the 1990s, postulating that many UFOs represent fully-automated craft designed for long-term monitoring of our solar system. Dutton claimed that the smaller craft seen in our atmosphere are scouts sent from a larger mothership.

The idea of using unmanned drones to explain a variety of UFO sightings has seen a resurgence since 2017, when news broke of military personnel reporting craft that could perform maneuvers seemingly impossible for a living pilot.

Interest in UFOs among government officials has continued to increase, and a number of politicians have gone on the record to demand a thorough examination of the UFO phenomenon, especially as a potential threat to national security.

In addition, rumors of a government coverup of UFOs have haunted ufology longer than the Black Knight or Astronautical Theory, and it would be easy to interpret the story above as evidence that the military sometimes silences witnesses.

In August of 2020, Tobias Wayland spoke to Gerald Turrise, who said that he’d "had an encounter at a U.S. Army station at a Nike Hercules missile site in Northfield, Illinois” in 1963.

"I was on guard duty at the time at our radar station," said Turrise of his encounter. "It was after midnight when I witnessed a UFO in the sky southeast of my location, maybe a mile away around 1000 feet above the terrain. I watched it for a few minutes before I made a phone call to our command offices in Arlington, Illinois, to report what I was observing. I was contacted a few days later by Dr. J. Allen Hynek. This report is documented in project Blue Book. Dr. Hynek had told me he was informed to tell me that what I saw was just a private airplane towing an advertising sign. I doubt they would be flying at that time of night, Now, there's no way a plane could ever make the moves I witnessed, and at the end of the encounter this UFO just shot up into space as fast as a bullet."

Turrise explained that the impression he got was that Dr. Hynek was being pressured into unfairly discrediting his sighting.

Dr. Hynek was a scientist and UFO investigator who was initially skeptical of the phenomenon when he signed on as a scientific consultant to the United States Air Force's Project Sign in 1948, but his opinion on the quality of evidence in favor of UFOs gradually shifted as he worked on projects like Sign and Blue Book.

He quickly grew frustrated with how flippantly his fellow scientists treated UFOs.

"Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is," wrote Dr. Hynek in an article for the April 1953 issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America titled Unusual Aerial Phenomena. "The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there...any residue that is worthy of scientific attention? Or, if there isn't, does not an obligation exist to say so to the public—not in words of open ridicule but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public places in science and scientists?"

Dr. Hynek went on to eventually found the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in 1973, and even presented a statement on UFOs to the United Nations General Assembly in 1978.

He remained a leader in the field of ufology until his death in 1986.

Dr. Hynek resented what he saw as Project Blue Book’s mandate to debunk UFOs, and while it's not known who exactly told him to discredit Turrise's sighting, doing so would be consistent with the perceived aims of the project. It's entirely possible that, since Dr. Hynek's specialty was in astronomy, someone within the Air Force disingenuously identified the object as an airplane and ordered him to report it as such to Turrise, despite any evidence to the contrary.

The sighting location itself could have even played a role, considering its sensitive nature. The Air Force may have been loath to report an unidentified flying object so close to a Nike Hercules missile site.

So far, no clear motive exists for any cover up that might have taken place as a result of the sighting reported above.

Reports from the Void is a repository to share those stories for which we do not have enough information to make a full report. This is usually because of little or no communication from the witness following their initial submission. The Singular Fortean Society will always provide as much information as possible regarding any correspondence during our attempts to speak with those involved.

This series is meant only to present you with the full breadth of the information sent to us, and makes no judgments towards the veracity of any stories shared within it.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

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