A Historical Glance at Space-Related Occurrences in Northern Indiana
Writer / Jeff Kenney
Photography Provided
This summer’s release of the new film “Asteroid City” in theaters worldwide provides as good an excuse as any (if any are really needed) to take a brief look at some space-related phenomena – specifically that of things flying in, or ostensibly so, from outer space to Indiana through the years.
While claims of UFO sightings are nothing new, you may or may not be aware that the Department of Defense established an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in 2020, with a public congressional hearing on the matter in 2022, which itself was focused on a report issued the previous year.
Among other information made available is the fact that some 400 reports of unidentified aerial objects are on record, and 143 reports by military planes of such objects between 2004 and 2021 remain unexplained. The possibility of alien spacecraft can’t be ruled out, the report notes.
Such concerns, nationally or in the Hoosier state, have ebbed and flowed over the past 70-plus years. The U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book was established during the peak era for UFO sightings in America – that is, the Cold War years of the 1950s and ‘60s, when popular references to potential alien invasion via movies, books and articles spurred widespread panic and likely mass phenomena of seeing-what-one-expected-to-see in the night skies. Through 1969, Project Blue Book reported more than 12,000 UFO sightings!
Among headline-making Indiana incidents: Hundreds of people reported seeing three flying saucers south of Indianapolis during this period, with military and police officials among the many witnesses. House sized and balloon shaped, these fiery-tailed oddities, glowing in the night sky, performed figure-eight-style maneuvers and disappeared near Martinsville.
Among officially disproven suppositions was the March 1951 story of a Marion County farmer who found a red parachute and mechanism in his pasture that caused agitation of his chickens and cows. The object turned out to be a weather observation balloon.
Expectations of “flying saucers” were high enough that a group of Monticello-area businessmen claimed to have written a message to potential alien visitors using geometric designs to spell out the words, “Come in peace. Let us talk together,” and encouraging them to land on nearby Shafer Lake (some locals, it should be noted, decried the endeavor as a tourism-oriented stunt, which sounds more credible than the potential for alien landings).
A number of UFOs were reported in 1966, including in Lakes Magazine-readership areas in northwest Indiana. Reports from around Valparaiso, Knox and Plymouth in March of that year included lights in the sky ranging from white to bright orange. Porter County Deputy Sheriff Fred Cook said that he, State Police Trooper Gary Whitledge, and Deputy Coroner Robert Watts tracked an object with a brilliant orange center and white fringes, moving at the speed of aircraft for some 15 miles away for about 15 minutes.
A trooper from the same state police post reported observing two egg-shaped, lighted objects for almost 10 minutes near U.S. Highway 30 south of Valparaiso, and Plymouth Police Sergeant Dennis Dreibelbis said he watched three egg-shaped objects circle Marshall County for more than three hours a few nights later.
Reports around Indianapolis and several cities in the vicinity, including by three deputy sheriffs, in the fall of 1966 described blueish balls of light that grew in size and faded into “an opaque mist.”
Oval-shaped UFOs were reported by a number of witnesses in the Connersville area in October of 1973, and a 1978 Associated Press report focused on Charles Tucker of Nappanee, Indiana, regional director of Mutual UFO Network, Inc., who reported that at least 23 “strong” reports of UFO sightings had taken place in Indiana in then-recent years.
By 1988, the same Mutual UFO Network was represented by Mount Vernon, Indiana, resident Francis L. Ridge, who, in an interview with the Evansville Press, said that 67 of 130 national sightings in 1987 were located in Indiana. Ridge detailed a group effort by Network members to capture a reported phenomenon near Corydon, Indiana, of orange lights appearing and disappearing in the sky. Ridge had a videotape showing moving light approaching an airplane.
Another spate of Lakes-area sightings took place shortly after when, in November of 1990, dozens of reports in the Culver area were referenced in the Culver Citizen newspaper, whose editor, Fred Karst, said “quite a few calls” had been coming in describing alleged nearby UFO sightings. One of these was from a security guard who described “a white, triangular-shaped light pattern.” Some chalked the phenomena up to activities at the Grissom Air Force Base near Peru, Indiana, but officials at the base dismissed the idea.
In April 2008, Kokomo, Indiana, experienced a mild panic when a high-decibel, house-shaking boom caused multiple calls to 911 and subsequent investigation by police, firefighters and Homeland Security. Accompanying the sound were reports of large, orange balls of light in the sky.
And let’s not forget the most visible manifestation of alien invasion in Indiana – the classic 1977 science fiction movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which took place near Muncie, Indiana!
Meteors Galore
Meanwhile, less-sentient invaders from outer space have struck Indiana in the form of meteorites.
Around three miles east of the Lakes Magazine-area town of Kentland, Indiana, in Newton County, is, perhaps surprisingly, a key site in the global history of meteor impact crater research, known internationally as the Kentland Crater.
As noted in a blog post on orangebeanindiana.com, “Being an impact crater is a big deal, but even among impact craters, the Kentland crater is a standout. Among geologists and planetary scientists, it holds the unique distinction as being both a relatively young example of impact tectonics (how big things from space make big things on Earth move), and a geologic enigma.”
It’s believed that the crater underlies a good-sized portion of southern Newton and northwestern Benton counties though only around .3 square miles of it are exposed. Believed to be millions of years old, the crater includes ancient carbonate, shale and sandstone, and shows signs of ancient meteor impact so great that layers of rock normally horizontal are fractured and exposed at the surface in almost vertical fashion.
A number of much smaller meteorites have hit Indiana over the years since reporting of such incidents began, but among those recorded in the Lakes area are a piece of chondrite “from a large fireball” that landed in Rochester on December 21, 1876; a large piece of iron from a meteorite reported “buried and lost” after it fell in Plymouth in 1893; a similarly “buried and lost” iron piece that struck in LaPorte in 1900; a 1915 piece of stoney iron that hit the South Bend area; and a chondrite meteor which struck a house in Hamlet (in Starke County) on October 13, 1959.
As it happens, the most dramatic (and violent) meteor strike in Indiana turned out to be a hoax.
In January of 1879, reports hit newspapers of a meteorite near Attica, Indiana, that crashed through the roof of a farmhouse occupied by widower Leonidas Glover. The victim, said to be asleep when the incident occurred, was badly mutilated and killed instantly by the rock, which crashed through a few more floors of the house before burying itself in the ground beneath.
The story was circulated and recirculated for some years in newspapers around the state and beyond, until a more scientific investigation was undertaken. This included a thorough questioning of many residents of Fountain County, none of whom knew or had heard of Leonidas Glover or the house struck by the meteor…something borne out by checking county records of residents as well. The entire affair, which even included, at one point, a chunk of rock with fake “blood” for greater effect, had been concocted.
And, while numerous reports of meteorites striking the earth abound throughout history, only one person in recorded history has actually been directly hit by a meteorite, and she was not an Indiana resident, though she did live to tell about the event.
Ann Hodges, age 34 of Sylacauga, Alabama, was asleep on her couch at home on November 30, 1954, when a nine-pound
meteorite crashed through the ceiling, striking a radio before it hit her in the thigh. Hodges had quite a bruise though no more significant injuries, though she did become understandably but briefly famous.
And so, whether you believe in UFOs, hope to see a meteor, or just plain enjoy the beauty of the stars, keep your eyes on those Indiana night skies. You never know what you might see.
Local historian Jeff Kenney is museum and archives manager at Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana.
Comments 2
I remember it vividly. It was the fall of 1973. I was at home with my new baby. The home was on a hill on the west side of highway 57. In the dark of night, I was looking out to the south. I watched three bright lights in the dark sky. They switched places several times. Of course, I was stone sober. I decided I must be seeing things after I blinked and they were gone. It appeared that the area below them was somewhere in rural Davies County.
Is this actually happening, or is it figment of people’s imagination? At some point Revelations speaks of strange forms wandering earth, The Book of Romans, wickedness and principalities in high places.