The Blueberry Hill Disc: Camp Delaware Hikers near Winsted, Connecticut

Summer 1976. Camp Delaware had been taking children into the woods around Winsted, Connecticut, since 1921. Today it is known as Greenwood Trails, set on more than 100 wooded acres in the Berkshire foothills.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 28 July, a group of campers set out on a hike with their counselor, Ira Leifer. He was 24, a college graduate. Their route took them up a wooded hilltop about three miles southwest of Winsted. The newspaper called it Blueberry Hill. The UFO chronologies call it Blueberry Mountain.

About 3:45 p.m., in broad daylight, the first warning was sound. A high-pitched screech. Then the object was there. A silvery, metallic, saucer-shaped craft with a red dome on top hovered silently at treetop level, at an angle above their heads.

The witnesses did not agree on everything. Leifer said the entire surface of the object appeared to be rotating, judging by the reflections changing across it. The younger campers saw it differently. To them, only the red, dome-shaped top section was moving.

For 15 to 25 seconds it simply hung there. Then the noise came back, a high-pitched whine like the feedback from a loudspeaker. The disc rose straight up. Within about two seconds it had disappeared from view. The hikers said it was faster than anything they had ever seen.

The report reached Mrs. Paula Holmes, president of the Northwest Connecticut Chapter of APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. She visited the site on Blueberry Hill and took statements from the witnesses. By one account she interviewed them separately and found their stories consistent in every material detail.

She found no imprints in the ground, no scorched vegetation and no residue. Still, she ruled the sighting bonafide. On 23 August 1976 the Winsted Citizen ran the story under the headline "UFO Sighting Ruled Bonafide." Holmes sent copies of her report to APRO headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, to the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, and to the Midwest UFO Network. In November 1976 CUFOS published the case in the International UFO Reporter, and it later entered UFOCAT, the computer database of sightings.

Holmes admitted she could only speculate. Her guess was unusual. A geological study of the area, done several years earlier by her son, had found magnesium in the hill. Perhaps, she suggested, this was a robot-controlled disc prospecting for magnesium. A modern write-up calls the idea speculative and unsupported by evidence.

A local weather-station operator reportedly thought a weather balloon unlikely. No hoax claim has surfaced, and no sceptic analysis is known. No government body looked into it. Project Blue Book had closed in 1969.

The case remains obscure. Even the headcount is disputed. The International UFO Reporter speaks of fourteen boys and their counselor. The Winsted Citizen counted fourteen people in all, thirteen campers aged 14 and 15 and their counselor. It is still listed as unexplained.