Most local people I’ve spoken to have never heard of New York State’s “Roswell”, the Mattydale UFO Crash of the early 1950’s.
It happened sometime between October 1953 and May 1954 in Mattydale, NY.
Franz and Hilde had immigrated to the United States after WWII. Both were working professionals and had been well educated with degrees from noted German Universities. It had been a late night, it was a Sunday morning about 3 a.m.; the Mattydale couple was returning home from visiting friends. Neither of the two had been drinking that evening.
As they drove past the Thruway towards Hancock Field (airport) they saw the flashing red lights of a police road block. They slowed and looked to see if there was an accident but none could be seen. When Franz turned the corner towards Mattydale he noticed over his left shoulder an object on the ground that appeared to be 20 or more feet across and perhaps 15 feet high at its center.
The couple noted that there were some sort of phosphorescent lights of different color spaced over the object’s surface. The couple says that these lights were bright enough to illuminate the men walking around the object and who seemed to be examining it.
Of the various men they saw around the object, some were in uniform, others were not. One of the men had a large camera like press photographers used and was taking extensive photos of the object. Hilde wondered if the object was something she had read about, a saucer shaped AVRO vehicle that was built by a Canadian firm.
What later perplexed the couple was that on Monday morning there was absolutely no news about the event on the radio or in the newspaper. They called the city editor at the local newspaper. He stated he didn’t know about but would look into it. The Franz called the called the sheriff’s office and discussed what he had seen and was told they knew all about it but was told “its Military secret we can’t discuss it.” He called the editor and told him what the sheriff’s department had told him. The city editor got really interested.
On his way home from work Franz purposely went to the field where they’d seen the disk. He could see that the weeds and vegetation was freshly flattened down. Also the walls of the gully were packed down in the places where the object had rested. He stated that there were heavy equipment tracks entering from one side and leaving from another.
Later both the police and the Air Force at Hancock Field denied that anything had occurred. The sheriff also stated that nobody in his department told anybody it was a military secret. Not wanting to be branded lunatics, Franz and Hilde dropped the whole matter. No other witnesses ever came forward.
The details of their story comes to us from a tape recorded interview by author Raymond Fowler in 1967.
This week’s UFO sightings are pretty scant. Let’s look at some New York UFO sightings from this time last year:
2 February 2013: at about 6 p.m. a motorist driving north on State Route 9 in Poughkeepsie near the Academy Street exit saw what appeared to be a plane falling out of the sky. As he got closer it came down in a swooping fashion at 45 degree angle then sat stationary hovering above the tree tops, the object was diamond shaped.
6 February 2013: at about 6 p.m. a motorist in the Herkimer area observed a line of approximately five glowing lights in sky. The lights hovered briefly then brightened and began slowly moving northward. Then abruptly seemed to faded away.
11 February 2013: at about midnight a motorist and passengers near Rochester observed a bright blue-white light about 300 yards away from them and it was hovering. As the car passed the area where the object was hovering, they stopped and backed up to get a better look. It was at this point that the bright object is reported to have begun following them. The terrified travelers sped away from the object. It wasn’t seen again.
16 February 2013: at about 9:30 p.m. a family in Rochester had been out dining. Upon leaving the establishment the family noticed six other restaurant patrons were looking up at triangle formation of bright orange fire ball like objects moving very fast across the sky.
17 February 2013: at about 2:30 a.m. a Hamburg resident glanced out a window and saw a large dark object with a white light on top rise up, hover for a short time then, fly directly overhead with no sound.
24 February 2013: at about midnight a couple of Brooklyn residents went outside for a smoke. The looked up and saw a bizarre, black object sort of wobbling, a few hundred feet above them. The black object seemed to be travelling at low altitude and silently and at tremendous speed.
1 March 2013: at about 8 p.m. a West Hempstead resident witnessed two large balls of fire in the sky. He estimates they were at least 30ft in diameter. He initially spotted them overhead approximately at 150ft. He says they silently flew in unison straight and level to the southeast until out of sight.
If you have a UFO sighting to report, you can use either one of the two national database services: www.NUFORC.ORG or www.MUFON.COM Both services respect confidentiality.
If you have a story to tell, I’d love to hear the when, where and what. Email it to [email protected]. The names of witnesses will be omitted to protect their privacy.