The Oradell Reservoir Disc and the North Jersey Police Sightings

The Oradell Reservoir spreads across five towns in Bergen County, New Jersey. Just south of its dam, the Oradell Avenue bridge crosses the Hackensack River. Saturday, 15 September 1962. At 6 p.m., J. J. McVicker, an ex-Navy officer, reported two "silver dollars" apparently revolving as they passed over West Nyack, New York.

About 7:45 p.m. Three boys stood on the bridge. David Finley and Steve Nagy, both 13, of Oradell. Robert Decker, 15, of Emerson. Over the water, a bright object "hovered close to the dam, splash-landed into the water, and then swiftly flew away with out a sound."

The boys ran to the Oradell police station. Police went out to look and had the boys sketch what they saw. An oval with a band around the middle, spots on the upper half and a fin below. Jacques Vallée later recorded a "bright luminous object surrounded with a glow." Two Emerson boys, William Cooper and Alfred Tauss, saw "a light, many times brighter than a star, that moved quickly back and forth over the pines." Two boys fishing at the bridge saw nothing.

The next day Finley returned with two friends. "We didn't believe Finley till we saw it," they said. Soon about 100 people crowded the bridge. They saw nothing.

At 4 a.m. on 18 September, two Westwood officers saw "a huge object, round at the top and tapering to a cone." At 3:40 a.m. on 21 September, between Hawthorne and North Haledon, quarry watchman William Stock and four invited policemen spent half an hour watching "a round object with two apparently revolving body lights." Officer George Jediny sketched a disc that "seemed to revolve."

Just after midnight on 24 September, numerous policemen watched an object that "changed from red to silver to green and back to red." When they turned a spotlight on it, it began to move. Reporter George Della Penta reportedly shot 18 feet of colour film. No trace of it has been found. On 28 September, police from seven counties reported UFOs.

Police chief George Brugnoli guessed the boys saw a bird heading south for the winter. Project Blue Book agreed: "Misidentification of a bird." Its file added: "No attempt at analysis of many other reptd sightings."

Around 25 September, an anonymous letter signed "The Bergenfield Pranksters" reached Oradell police. "Our flying saucer was made of a balsa wood frame filled with helium balloons for natural buoyancy," it read. It claimed only the Saturday and Sunday sightings at Oradell, and insisted the boys were not involved. Science writer Philip J. Del Vecchio objected that "No object such as they could have put together could have moved at the lightning speeds attributed to the UFO." NICAP rejected the letter as an answer for Hawthorne. The APRO Bulletin wrote: "There is more to this than meets the eye."

In 2020 researcher Curt Collins revisited the flap. He noted that The Record had merged separate reports, and that saucer fever may have been primed by Oradell-raised astronaut Wally Schirra, whose Mercury launch was scheduled for 28 September. The flap faded before his 3 October launch. By 1967, a retelling in Fate had more than 25 witnesses. No 1962 source says that. The original story was simpler. Three boys on a bridge. A splash. Then silence.