Kecksburg UFO Crash - First Eyewitness?

On December 9, 1965 hundreds of eyewitnesses watched an amazing object streak across the sky, the object was witnessed from Canada all the way to Kecksburg, Pennsylvania where the object crash landed. Soon after it was reported to be a spectacular meteorite by military and other officials. Eyewitnesses who saw the object, claimed what they saw sitting in a ravine was certainly no meteorite, but rather an unknown object. I received an email from a gentleman who told me he had been witness to the crashed object at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. What I didn't realize was that this fellow, who was 15 years old at the time, and out hunting with his brother and a friend may have been the first eyewitness to actually see the crashed object.

*By Brian Vike The UFO Chronicles (© Brian Vike) 5-9-06

In the interview I have done with him, he goes on to tell of an amazing story and notes that later in life while serving in the military he came across a pilot who was scrambled to intercept the Kecksburg UFO. Because I feel that this is such an important piece to the puzzle I have decided to post the audio clip to my website where visitors can listen to the actual audio interview which can be heard at the link below.

I would like to give my many thanks to the eyewitness for his excellent report. Also I would like to encourage any other folks who have been witness to this event, or have any information to please contact me at: hbccufo@telus.net

I have written up the report which I have taken from the audio interview I did with the eyewitness today, October 22, 2005. The full report is below.

As mentioned above I called the witness on October 22, 2005 and took his statement of the events that he remembers happening in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. The man was very aware of what he saw, although this event took place so many years ago. He went on to explain why he was in the area at the time of the amazing experience and of course described what he saw.

The witness said it was a particularly warm night for December, by local standard it was rather balmy he told me. He, his brother and a friend decided to go raccoon hunting. They gathered up the three dogs and drove out to an area called Freeman Falls. From there the fellows all split up and had agreed to meet back at the truck. They were walking through the woods with quite a bit of space between them. Larry, the man I spoke with, was at the lowest end of the line, which had him closer to where the crash site was going to be. At one point, as he was moving through the woods, he looked back in the direction of Kecksburg because a bright light happened to catch his eye. His first thoughts were that it was a plane with a orange landing light on it, but quickly realized that the light was just to bright to be on a plane, and seemed now to be a plane on fire or in trouble. All of a sudden whatever it was, changed course 90 degrees very abruptly. At this point the object was heading directly towards his position but again it made another course change, moving away from him. Then suddenly its direction changed once more and seemed to be heading straight for him.

He stated that it appeared to maintain a certain altitude then all of a sudden made a sharp dip downwards from roughly 500 to 600 feet in altitude to approximately 300 feet and at a high rate of speed. Standing rather in shock, he assumed his brother and friend had also seen this due to it's brightness and flying at such a low level. But he told me that the other two people had not seen it, which may have been due to them being a distance away from him. From this point he watched it come down. He moved quickly threw the woods with one of the dogs to the area where the object had crashed and scrambled down into the ravine, thinking he might be able to help someone from the crash. He immediately noticed a small brush fire had started around the crash area. Once in the ravine and close enough to the crashed object, he quickly figured out that what he was looking at was not an airplane that he knew of. The object had partially dug itself into the ravine and he could see that approximately two to three feet of it was buried into the ground. He noted the back side of the object was flat and approximately five feet in diameter and the sides looked textured/rippled. Larry had with him a six volt dry cell light that he was using for raccoon hunting, he shone the light on the object and could see that it was steaming due to the intense heat it was giving off, plus some smoke due to the small brush fires that had been started.

With his light, he tried to see if there was any kind of opening or identifying markings on it, but saw a metal band about one foot up from the base. Larry could clearly see some kind of drawings or lettering on the band. It was maybe two inches wide. Still looking at the lettering or figures, to him they made no sense or were not any written language he had seen before. He said there were a series of dots, swirls, triangular shapes and some looked like crosses with two lateral lines running across them.

At the time, he was only about 15 feet away from the bronze colored object and seeing Larry was looking at something very unknown to him, his next thought was to go back to get his brother and then to seek or get to the phone to call for help. He climbed back out of the ravine, couldn't find his dog anywhere, then whistled and his dog did finally come to him. Running through the bush and yelling out his brothers name, he finally met up with his brother and the friend. The first thing out of Larry's brother's mouth was, "my god, what was it"? Larry took his brother and friend to the area where the object was embedded into the ground to show them, all of them at a bit of a distance and the other two could not figure out what it was either. Then the fellows all heard the fire engines coming in their direction from Kecksburg. Seeing the fire department was on the way, Larry's brother mentioned that there wasn't much they could do, so they left and took the dogs home.

(Note: Larry thought it was important to note that when the three of the fellows were standing looking at the object, and having their dogs with them all of the dogs were certainly agitated and had the hair standing up on their backs and sniffing the air. The dogs also kept trying to hide behind the fellows as the leashes were getting caught up in the guys legs).

After the brothers arrived home they told their parents about what they had seen and that got the boys father's curiosity going and they decided to go back for another look. Larry said at that time alot of folks were driving up to the area to see what had happened. Of course by this time the Mount Pleasant Fire Department was on the scene as they thought they were heading to a plane crash. Of course when the general public and Larry and his family arrived near the location where he saw the object, the Sheriff's department had already erected a barrier across the road and not allowing anyone to get close to the crash site. When Larry's father asked the Sheriff what had happened, he said he had no information other than the Fire Department was dealing with the incident.

Eventually they left and went back home, and watched the news later that evening but didn't hear anything really on what happened. But the next day Larry went to school and the teachers told the classes that they were not to talk about the event that took place the night before. Actually Larry went on to say that the teachers mentioned that what people saw, was no more than a meteor/meteorite that has crash landed. As Larry said, he found that rather odd that they weren't to talk about a meteor. Well he knew it wasn't a meteor as he had witnessed it up close and personal, and told his friends about what he witnessed.

(At this point in the interview Larry stated the reason why he was coming out with this now was he hoped that by telling what he saw in the ravine that night, it just might mend the rift that was dividing the community. He also stated that what hit the ground was certainly not a meteor, he wasn't claiming it to be a UFO as he just didn't have any ideas to what it was he saw. He even had thoughts of it being a Russian Space Capsule).

Larry spoke about the reproduction that was made of the object and which was placed on top of the Kecksburg Fire Department, it was very similar to what he saw in the ravine that evening.

As the months and years passed by and things settled down over the event that took place in Kecksburg, it was a few years later when Larry enlisted into the Airforce as a aircraft fighter mechanic, and was stationed at Hamilton AFB which is located in Marin County, CA. He was in the barracks one evening when the alert siren went off and some F106 jet interceptors were scrambled and had intercepted something over the Pacific ocean. He mentioned that this was common as the Russian and American aircraft would play this cat and mouse game. Over some time the aircraft mechanics and pilots became rather close, and they became good friends. Larry told me that one of the pilots stationed at the base was a very seasoned pilot, did two tours in Vietnam and the next day Larry asked the pilot who was a Major, you guys were scrambled last night, the pilot said yes. Larry asked were the Russian playing games again, and the pilot replied: Quote: "I don't know what the hell it was"!

Larry then started talking to him and related his story of what he saw in the ravine at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Larry said the pilots jaw dropped almost to the ground. And asked, you actually saw it? Larry said yes and assumed he was the first person to see the object. Well it ended up that the pilot had a good friend who served with the Michigan National Guard back in 1965 who actually intercepted the object which fell in Kecksburg on the same night Larry saw the object. There were a number of fighter aircraft that had followed the object, or from their aircraft could track it. Larry assumed that the fighter jets had tracked the object for some distance before it hit the ground, but he said he had heard no aircraft on the night the object crashed. Later on after the Michigan National Guard pilots who followed the object returned to their base, they were told by base commanders that the object had landed in Western Pennsylvania and was nothing more than a meteorite. End of story!

Brian Vike asked Larry if he roughly knew when the military showed up in the town of Kecksburg. He said approximately one hour after the object crashed. I also asked how far away any military base would have been from the crash site. Larry said the nearest base was not all that far away. (Brian Vike is wondering how the military was able to arrive so quickly after the object crashed, and in force by the sounds of it. Then one looks at the fighter aircraft already being sent out and following the object, the military knew ahead of time where the unknown had come down, or at least the approximate location where to look. Of course Larry believed the military were also already on their way as well as they had to have been tracking it as it came in).

Larry said another thing he felt important to mention was, that night of the crash when they came back with their father to the crash area, the Fire Department were there along with the police who did have the road blocked off so no traffic was able to pass by as I mentioned in the report above. But then the next day the family traveled back to the area where the object came down, Larry said the military were everywhere! And in another hamlet called Mammoth the military were walking all over the area and with a barrier set up, and on the barrier there was a sign which read, "deadly force authorized beyond this point", "no admittance" and the soldiers were carrying M-14's weapons and Larry said they were pointing the guns in the direction of people. And of course the military still telling everyone in the community that all the object was, was a meteorite. As Larry said, why all the fuss and pointing weapons at folks if all it was, was a meteorite.

Larry also remarks, when the military really lost credibility, is when they said nothing had landed.

Anyway he went on to say it was the night of the second day of the crash, or the night after the crash the military removed what ever it was on a flatbed truck covered with a large tarp and rumors were saying it went to Wright-Patterson AFB.

Larry also said folks living at the junction at Meteor Road witnessed the military trucks (a number of them) moving into the area, one appeared to be a mobile command unit and pulling a trailer. A perimeter was set up all around the crash site.

Larry said about a year or two after the crash, and them still hunting in the area when his brother was coming over the top of a hill and walking through a hay field he came across a K- ration can. After his brother found the one K- ration, he kicked the ground a little bit and discovered a few more cans, of course military issue. The fellows investigated a little more to see if they might find any more trash left behind by the military, and Larry said nothing else was found. They swept the area in a circular pattern, but he thought it might be interesting if someone was to go to the area with a metal detector to see what, if anything, they might be able to find, which might provide an answer to how the area was cordoned off to the general public by the military.

So there we have an interesting report from a person who had an incredible experience, one I am sure he will never ever forget.

Remember, you can listen to this telephone interview at my website. I gave the link for the audio report near the middle of this story. It is well worth listening to.

I would also like to thank Larry for allowing me to do an interview with him for the audio portion, and also for a fascinating report.

* Originally published by Brian Vike, Director of HBCC UFO Research; reprinted here in its an entirety with written permission

See Also:

"When I Got To Kecksburg That Night, I Was Met By Army People and State Cops"

NASA Ordered To Turn Over 'Kecksburg UFO Files!'

THE CONCLUSION OF THE NASA LAWSUIT: Concerning the Kecksburg, PA UFO case of 1965

'Unidentified Flying Object' Falls Near Kecksburg | UFO CHRONICLE – 1965

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