The Moline and Galesburg Police Sightings: Officer Bill Fisher's 8mm Film (Project Blue Book Case 11460)

Early March 1967. Across the Quad Cities and the farmland to the south, people began reporting lights in the sky. The reports came from Silvis, Rock Island, Moline, Henry County and Knox County in Illinois, and from Buffalo, Iowa. Most described white lights. Henry County sheriff's deputies reported a frame of three lights, red, white and green, with an occasional intense red light.

6 March 1967. 4:25 a.m. Knox County Deputy Sheriff Frank Courson was in the Galesburg area when something approached and passed overhead at low altitude. It was shaped like a rubber cup placed under a furniture leg, with a dome set in the cup. The bottom spun rapidly. The rim pulsated red. It made a hissing sound. "The bottom part of this object had a rim around it 5 or 6 feet thick," he said. The top was "kind of a whitish crystalline looking." A white ray came from the spinning rim.

9 March. Afternoon. Moline patrolman Bill Fisher parked his three-wheeled patrol motorcycle on 16th Avenue, across from Sacred Heart School, where his 11-year-old son was a pupil. After hearing about the earlier sightings, he had started carrying an 8mm movie camera on the trike.

Then he saw it. A strange, bright, silvery object, apparently hovering over the Mississippi River. He called it "U-shaped" at first, "like a pickle." It had "a metallic, shiny surface on the side." Asked later how big it was, he answered: "I think it was as big as a box car."

His son saw it too. "Hey, look at that plane, it's just hanging there. There were no wings." Nine-year-old Carl Petrick looked through the instrument Fisher handed him and saw "a silver, cigar-shaped object" with three long windows along the side. "Those windows were powder blue, like the jersey shade of the St. Louis Cardinals." Nuns and neighbours were watching. Fisher filmed as the object moved northwesterly, away from him, until it faded from view.

The Air Force arrived the very next day. Captains Edward Orenic and Anton Kato interviewed witnesses, talked to air traffic controllers, pilots and the National Weather Service, and wrote a 94-page report for Project Blue Book. The rural lights, they concluded, were probably home-made hot-air balloons built from plastic garment bags. Fisher's object was harder. They were "unable to positively identify the object" and leaned towards a plane, a helicopter or a balloon. "The 8mm film failed to reveal any information that would dispute this evaluation."

The pranks were real. A candle balloon crash-landed in Rock Island. Another turned up near Monmouth. Two red kites carrying batteries and a light bulb were found near Galesburg. A Northwestern astronomer suggested Venus. The investigators wrote that the witnesses "appeared to be reliable. They did see an object." They also blamed press coverage for "a type of mass hysteria."

Brad Sparks still lists the case among Blue Book's unknowns. Fisher says a mysterious trio dressed in black confronted him at the police station. J. Allen Hynek sought him out, and he was interviewed for the book edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page.

Fisher's film survives at the National Archives as 341-PBB-757. The witnesses never took their stories back. "It's still pretty vivid in my mind," Fisher said in 2015. His son put it simply. "The key word is unidentified."