The Hammond and Whiting Police Chase of a Beeping Sky Object

November 1957 was a restless month. Sputnik 2 had gone up on November 3. The Levelland reports from Texas were barely a week old. Indiana had already had its own case, at Merom, on November 6. Interest in beeping satellites and in UFOs was running very high.

Sunday, November 10, 1957. Shortly after 7 p.m. A housewife near Jackson Avenue and Cherry Street in South Hammond called the police. Sgt. Charles Mauder and Officer Steve Betustak answered.

They could not make out the outline of any object. What they saw were lights. Red and white, hovering between 500 and 1,000 feet over South Hammond. Betustak remembered the sound. "The only thing heard was a series of beeps like the squeaking of a dry bearing."

Then a thumping sound. The lights swung through a 120-degree turn. The object "appeared to bank like an airplane when it makes a turn." As it drew away, its rear lights turned green.

The officers sped along 169th Street toward Hessville at approximately 80 miles per hour. They quickly lost sight of the lights. Charles Moore, a traffic accident investigator working a crash at 175th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard, joined in. To him it was a "bright, soundless flying thing" shaped like an "elongated basket." He saw only a green light.

On Columbia Avenue the beeps broke into the police radios. They lasted for about five blocks. Across the city, residents heard beeps on car radios and televisions. Some sets blacked out for a short time. A motorist reported radio failure. Radio operator Michael Metrick handled the calls, and State and Gary police were notified.

At approximately 7:40 p.m., Sgt. Rudolph Puhek and Patrolman Eugene Surdy walked out of the Whiting police station. Above them was a saucer-shaped object with red, yellow and blue lights. It sped across the evening sky heading southwest "without emitting any mechanical sounds." Puhek radioed a squad car. The officer confirmed seeing it, then watched it "vanish into thin air."

No Project Blue Book file has been found. NICAP catalogued the case among its electromagnetic effects reports, entry 571110: "Loud beeping caused radio interference as police chased UFO. TV blackout in city, motorist reported radio failure." No official conclusion is on record. No hoax has ever been alleged.

No published explanation exists either, though the details invite one. Red, green and white are standard navigation light colours, and the officers themselves compared the turn to an airplane. Yet the accounts do not sit neatly together. Hammond saw no outline, then a basket. Whiting saw a saucer. Hessville and Gary lie east or southeast of South Hammond. Whiting saw the object heading southwest. Whether this was one object, nobody can say.

The story survives through a single newspaper article, "Cops Chase Sky Object" in the Hammond Times, retold in 2019 by Anthony Borgo of the Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society. Borgo set it inside the wave of November 9 to 15, 1957, described by Aimé Michel. The original article and the Blue Book microfilm remain open leads.