Ten Important UFO/Alien Cases in Indiana History
From abductions and saucers to Air Force investigations and Congressional hearings, Indiana has a rich history of run-ins with the unknown.
Mysterious “Airship” Sightings / Vincennes (1897)
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| Often referred to as the Great California Airship was also seen in the Midwest. |
Starting in 1896, witnesses in California reported seeing a large, unidentified craft in the sky, and numerous sightings surfaced in other states as the object (or objects) purportedly made its way east across the country—that is, before the invention of the airplane and long-range dirigibles. Newspapers hyped the progress of the “airship,” including the Vincennes Morning Commercial, which, in April 1897, printed the accounts of a number of “reputable citizens” who variously claimed to have seen something resembling a sphere of golden light, a ball of fire, and a flying steamboat. After a two-month absence during the winter of 1896-97, the mysterious object—described by some witnesses as being suspended beneath a dark, cigar-shaped craft—reappeared over the Midwest, where it was reportedly seen from Indiana to Michigan and from Minnesota to Texas before abruptly disappearing for good in April of 1897. To read more about the Airship of 1896-97.
A “Huge Metallic Object” / Terre Haute, Indiana (1951)
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J. Edward Roush and the Symposium on UFOs / Washington, D.C. (1968)
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| J. Edward Roush |
UFO Invasion of 1973 / Delaware County
On the night of October 9, residents of east-central Indiana lit up first-responder switchboards with upwards of 700 calls reporting UFO sightings, according to an article in The Cincinnati Post. Local law-enforcement officers spent hours tracking the object, described as “blinking a red-white-blue revolving light and often hovering near the ground.” (We can only presume they weren't merely seeing the flashers of their own squad cars .) Astronomy students at Ball State University claimed to have seen the UFO by telescope, and radar operators at an airfield in Fort Wayne allegedly “picked up an unexplained blip on their screen.” In fact, a widespread flurry of such activity—known as a “flap”—that October came to be known as the UFO Invasion of 1973, and congressman Roush, quoted in the Columbus Citizen Journal, worried that “the increased sightings nationally could lead to a state of panic and hysteria, and we ought to be concerned about it.”
The “Visitations at Copley Woods” / Indianapolis (1983)
As the story goes, Debbie Jordan-Kauble, then a young woman living with her parents at their eastside home, was abducted by alien beings and subjected to transgenic experimentation. Evidence of the “visitations” remained in the form of a bare spot in the yard where, it was said, no vegetation would grow for years. Her account was documented in the bestselling book Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (which identified Jordan-Kauble as “Kathie Davis” and used a fictional place name), by popular paranormal author Budd Hopkins. The story also inspired a television miniseries.
The Mongo Photo / Mongo (1994)
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| Mongo UFO |
In northeastern Indiana, near the Michigan border, six men were sitting around a campfire on the night of August 31, when, according to a Michigan Department of Natural Resources fire supervisor identified only as “JK,” they saw something “glowing through the treetops” that “moved right out from behind the trees and into an open area near a road and hovered toward us. And it was clear as can be. It was a flying saucer, just that vivid.” One of the men managed to take a photograph of the object (pictured). Although a blimp was reportedly in the area that night, an investigator from the Indiana chapter of the Mutual UFO Network(MUFON)—an organization of volunteers who investigate accounts of extraterrestrial phenomena—looked into the report and determined that "the aerial object photographed cannot be positively identified at this time. It remains a UFO."
Kokomo Boom / Kokomo (2008)
At approximately 10:30 p.m. on April 16, several loud, percussive noises rattled homes in Kokomo, and residents reported seeing streaks of light illuminate the sky. The event prompted local authorities to dispatch law-enforcement officers to look for a possible downed aircraft, but no evidence of a crash was ever found, according to an Associated Press article printed the next day. An Indiana Air National Guard officer based in Fort Wayne said the “boom” and accompanying lights could have come from F-16 jet training exercises breaking the sound barrier and deploying flares—but added that his unit’s logs did not show that any sonic booms were produced that night. In the transcript of a radio transmission from the evening, a sheriff’s deputy says, “Grissom [Air Reserve Base, near Kokomo] just advised me their security forces advised that there’s not any military aircraft that’s been up or doing anything in that area because they just contacted Ft Wayne as well, just to make sure.” Some UFOlogists have disputed that F-16s were the source of the phenomena, claiming on one website, for example, that monitoring revealed “at least three (3) anomalous radar-only tracks which exhibited ‘unusual flight characteristics.’” The Discovery Channel’s Investigation X program later highlighted the incident on national TV:
Matthew Reed Abduction / Brownsburg (2009)
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| Thomas & Matt Reed |
On the night of March 30, while driving home to Brownsburg after seeing a movie in Avon, Matthew Reed (pictured) reportedly saw an orange ball of light in the sky. Then, about an hour and half later, he found himself outside of his vehicle, which was parked on the side of the road. He later revealed that he had been taken aboard a spacecraft and examined by extraterrestrial creatures—and that he and his brother were abducted on three separate occasions as boys living in Massachusetts. The case has been featured in documentaries on the Science Channel and Destination America. To read more...
A Family Secret Revealed / Logansport (2011)
MUFON Indiana only recently logged case no. 32747—but it contained the oldest report in its files. On October 20, a man submitted an old video recording of his great grandmother and her sisters, recounting the details of an alleged UFO encounter their father, a farmer, had experienced in the Logansport area, probably sometime in the 1890s. On the tape, one of the women describes taking food to her father and grandfather in the field one day, when they yelled at her to hide in the woods. They later told her they’d seen a machine fly over the field, and that little people had gotten out of the craft, collected samples of corn and soil, and then departed. The woman’s father then made her promise never to talk about it. To read more...
Lucky Point: A Hoosier UFO Hot Spot / Monroe City
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| Lucky Point UFO |
