FROM DISCS TO DOGMEN: The Pennsylvania UFO Phenomenon

For over a century Pennsylvania’s skies have hosted baffling UFO encounters, from glowing discs in lakes to physics-defying crafts, to even werewolf-like entities, fueling mystery and the imagination.

Pennsylvania has always been a land of mysteries in the skies. It has become one of the most intriguing destinations for UFO sightings throughout the years, with tales that date back long before the term “flying saucer” was even coined. From glowing discs hovering over fields, to objects that break the laws of physics, the state’s history is filled with encounters that leave you wondering what might actually be out there. And these are not mere passing glimpses; these are encounters that can leave a witness profoundly shaken – altered for life. There’s the Carbondale incident, where strange lights in a lake sent people into a panic. There’s the experienced aviator who encountered something that decades in the cockpit could not explain. There are numerous accounts of silent craft and disc-shaped objects, eerie lights in the sky — occasions when the stars were blotted out. There are reports of the stopping of time, an encounter that had state troopers speechless, and even an extraterrestrial werewolf-like entity. From the earliest sightings in 1917 through more modern accounts, Pennsylvania’s connection to the UFO phenomenon is undeniable, if not unbelievable. What’s going on in the skies over the Keystone State? And why is it happening there in particular?

CHAPTER I: Lanterns and Lies: The Carbondale UFO Mystery

Most people have heard of the famous Kecksburg UFO case from 1965, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to strangeness in the skies of Pennsylvania. The state boasts a long, rich history of strange sightings and bizarre encounters going back well over a century. We can begin in the city of Carbondale in 1974.
It’s a cold November night, three teenage boys hanging out on the street in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. There’s Bill and John Lloyd, and their buddy Bob Gillette. The stars are only beginning to come out and they are doing what teenagers do, just talking and passing time. Paying no mind that they were about to experience a series of world events that would hit the headlines and ignite controversies for decades.
A burst of golden-white light bolts through the sky overhead out of nowhere. And this was not a plane, and not a meteor – this thing was flying faster than they’ve ever seen. It appeared to have come from Salem Mountain, and the boys had seen it crash just outside Russell Park, near a local cemetery and the lake. It was all so strange and sudden that it took them a moment to process what they had just witnessed.
Most people would probably run away from something like that, but these guys? They headed straight for it. I mean, if you’re a teenager and you think you’ve just seen something fall out of the sky, you have to play one of your off-brand superheroes to check it out, right? Things went more off the rails when they reached the lake. There was this strange light coming up from underneath the water — not a normal reflection or anything like that, but something really weird. And like one of the boys said, it was making this fizzing noise, like when you throw a cigarette in the water. Another picked up a strange smell, like gas from a kitchen stove. But the creepiest part was the water itself — it became this strange green-yellow color from whatever was down there.
The boys knew they would need backup for this, so they enlisted three more friends before returning to the lake. Which is when the strangeness goes up a notch — that glowing thing was about 20 feet farther out in the water. It wasn’t just sitting there; it was moving around under the surface. They could now see that the light on the surface had a clear disc shape from where they were hovering, like something out of a sci-fi movie.
At this point they ran to their parents to tell them what happened. Their parents called the police, although, in fact, it took a total of two calls before any police officers appeared. At about 10 PM, Officers Barbero and Jacobina arrived, and in quite an unusual move, they shot their guns at the thing glowing in the water! Unbelievably, the object dodged the bullets, almost as if it knew what was happening. This wasn’t just some reflection or scrap metal — this thing was responding to what was taking place above the water.
The officers knew they were dealing with something far beyond their everyday experience, so they called for backup. Officer Eltrilla and an emergency crew arrived later with a boat and some strong, portable lights. While this is going on, the three original witnesses are standing by the police car and overhear something fascinating on the police radio — someone ordering to “hold off the news media” on the case. They also noticed that there was a photographer taking pictures of everything but it was hard to tell whether it was a journalist that had somehow caught wind of the story, or someone working for the police, or just some local snapping pictures because nobody would believe what they had seen.
The boys didn’t go home until well after midnight. The next morning, the duo headed back to the lake as soon as they awoke to see if they could find anything left behind – but what they found was Police Chief Francis Dottle posted near the water’s edge to keep everyone at arm’s length. Talk about suspicious. But this group of kids were determined to find out what was going on, and they stayed behind, watching from a distance. And what they witnessed was quite strange.
First, this crane just shows up at the scene — and here’s the weird part — no one ever saw it leave. Then a big delivery truck pulled up, which only added mystery. But the oddest thing was watching a scuba diver head into the water. When this man came off the boat, he was literally screaming, waving his hands around and it took a few police officers to try to calm him down. Whatever he saw down in that dark water really got to him.
Well, the next day, things get even weirder. And suddenly all the police have disappeared, and instead of trying to keep people away from the lake, they’re now actually encouraging people to come see it. In what appeared to be an entirely staged demonstration, another diver gets in the water and emerges with — wait for it — an old railroad worker’s lantern. The cops are like — problem solved, it was just a big hoax. But those three teen witnesses? They weren’t fooled for an instant.
They were so convinced that something underhanded was taking place with the investigation that they went to the local news media. If only someone would say what everyone was thinking: that the police more than likely had set up that lantern to disguise what really had happened. And if you are honest, just imagine – why would they need a crane and delivery truck to pull out an old lantern?
This drew the attention of a Matt Graeber who operated the UFO Report and Information Center out of Philadelphia. When he heard about the incident on the radio, he drove in to Carbondale at 5 AM on November 11th. When he arrived he couldn’t believe his eyes: there were between 1,500 to 3,000 people there in the middle of the lake! Among the ecosystem, people were chatting with all sorts of theories about what could be in the water.
Graeber said the entire scene resembled something out of a science fiction film. It was getting really hyped up, and rumors started flying through the crowd like wildfire. Some people even went on to accuse Graeber himself of being some sort of government plant, despite the fact he hadn’t worked for the military in a decade. So tense was the situation that both Graeber and Police Chief Dottle were concerned that the crowd might go out of control if something triggered them.

CHAPTER 2: Eerie Lights in Erie

Pennsylvania’s skies were uniquely active during this time. A few months later, in February of 1975, something very strange occurred in Simpson, just as it had in Carbondale. This witness was driving down Route 171, and saw weird red and green lights hovering over the mountains. And they weren’t the only person who had seen the lights – other vehicles were now pulled over on the road, their occupants standing outside staring up at these strange lights.
Curious as to what had everyone so transfixed, this witness pulled over, too. So these red and green lights stayed and hovered in the sky for some time and then suddenly the lights turned off and suddenly a bright white beam of light appeared. Before anyone had even fully registered what was happening, the thing blasted off at a speed that would make a fighter jet seem like it was standing still.
A few months after that, in June, two friends were fishing at Red Bank, close to the Allegheny Reservoir, when they noticed something strange in the sky. What was really fascinating about this was how it behaved — it would fly along, suddenly stop completely in midair, hover for a while, and then start moving again. That’s not how planes or helicopters work. They observed this peculiar aerial ballet for about an hour, until the object vanished.
Later that morning, while driving home to Pittsburgh, they heard something intriguing on KDKA radio. At 6:30 AM, the DJ was talking about how he had read that a UFO had crashed into a lake somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania. The story was updated twice more, at 7:00 AM and 7:30 AM, with the latest report stating that the National Guard had the area surrounded. But then – poof! – the story just vanished. No radio updates, no headlines in the newspapers, no coverage on local TV. As if the entire situation had never existed.
Around this same time, another incident took place near Erie. Two individuals were driving down a deserted road when they saw a disc-shaped craft hovering in the air, roughly 1,000 feet off the ground. They had a solid look at the object, and they estimated that it was approximately the size of a basketball court, or about 80 feet across. It had small flashing lights all around the edge — red, yellow, blue, green — but the vehicle (or whatever it was) was completely silent – it didn’t make a sound. Not a buzz, not a hum, not even the sound of air being pushed around it.
They pulled over; both got out to see whatever this thing was. They stood watching it for a couple of minutes, then decided to continue their drive. After that night, they never discussed what they saw together. Just totally ignored it, as if it were too strange to even talk about. This may sound odd, but it’s quite common after close encounters with UFOs – like a switch in the brain being flipped to turn off any desire to discuss the incident with anyone – even those who were there during the encounter.

CHAPTER THREE: The Oil City Light Show

We now move on to Oil City, Pennsylvania. It was November 1st, 1974, and this high school kid and his brothers were doing what many folks did back in the day — tuning in to their CB radio – the social media of the time, in which people could converse with each other across town. Most of the time, it was very routine stuff, but on this night, the chatter was different.
Numerous individuals began reporting strange lights in the sky near the Vocational Technical Center across from Oil City High School. The brothers sensed an adventure in the making and hopped in their car and drove over to check it out.
But what they found when they got there was beyond bizarre. Three or four bright lights were flickering in the night sky, but they weren’t lights like on an airplane, nor were they stars. These things were miles apart, and they were moving in crazy geometric formations that would be impossible for any known aircraft. The boys added that the lights appeared to be “dancing” above them, flying in perfect formation as though they were performing some sort of cosmic light show.
These two teens weren’t the only ones keeping tabs on the UFOs. There were hundreds of other people around at the location, all looking up at these strange lights. The show lasted nearly two hours, leaving plenty of time for people to watch and wonder what the hell they were watching. I know, with that many witness, all of them seeing the same thing, you can’t just say that it was somebody’s imagination, right?

CHAPTER FOUR: Saylor’s Lake, Silent Lights, and a Stunned State Trooper

March 1, 1973. Saylor’s Lake in Monroe County was a private lake people would visit to relax and appreciate the outdoors. But this particular evening, around 7:30 PM, it morphed into something of a Close Encounter.
A few residents were strolling around the lake or talking to their neighbors when strange lights appeared over the water. They were traveling the skies with what seemed like intelligence, darting back and forth 1,500 feet above the lake in an appearance of dancing. This was a little different from other times though, where the lights kept changing from white to red to blue in these multi-colored displays that nobody seemed able to explain.
The sight was unusual enough that someone called the authorities, and one of them, State Trooper Jeffrey Hontz, dropped by to investigate. You might think a state trooper comes across plenty of things, but even Officer Hontz was stunned by what he saw. When he spoke to the press later, he said the lights looked like “Christmas trees flying in the air.”
According to various witnesses involved, approximately 40 different lights appeared in this aerial display. And unlike helicopters or planes at that altitude, which would have been extremely loud, these things were silent. Not even a whisper. The whole process lasted until just before 11 PM.

CHAPTER FIVE: A Tent, A Grandmother, And A Silent Visitor Overhead

It was summer 1973 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and one of those super hot nights when you can hardly stand to be in the house. One teenager was sleeping outside in a tent to avoid the heat. Little did they know they were about to see a scene plucked from H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”
They were lying there watching the stars in a clear sky, and all of a sudden they saw this weird star-orbed red thing flying across the sky. And it was no ordinary shooting star or satellite. This thing seemed intelligent – with an agenda and determination.
The teen got so excited they dashed in to bring their grandmother to come see it as well. When they both returned outside, this thing had already darted across the entire width of their house. The sky, which had been pretty normal aside from that one red object, suddenly came to life. Multiple colored star-like objects just materialized, all moving much faster than any airplane. These objects seemed almost to be playing with one another, coming so close they looked ready to collide, only to dodge at the last moment.
The scene lasted for roughly half an hour. The objects were darting about, and taking impossible angles and maneuvers that would’ve pulverized a human pilot due to the extreme G-forces. Then they all disappeared, not flying off, but winking out of existence as if someone flipped a switch.
Even though the teen’s grandmother had stood around watching this entire thing with her grandkid, she absolutely refused to discuss it afterward. Just pretended it had never happened. The teenager later learned that a local newspaper covered other witnesses to the same thing that evening, but like so many UFO reports, it never got follow-up coverage. The whole thing just kind of … happened.

CHAPTER SIX: The Wainwright’s Werewolf

This next story is quite possibly one of the most terrifying UFO encounters in Pennsylvania history. August 27, 1973, in Bensalem. Alan and Elsie Wainwright were sitting on their back porch, enjoying a pleasant summer evening and gazing at the stars. It was one of those quiet moments that rapidly morphed into a scene out of a horror movie.
Out of nowhere, Alan lets out a shocked moan. When Elsie glances up to see what scared him, she sees a massive boomerang-shaped craft gliding silently over their house. The thing halts in midair, right above them, like it’s surveying their home, and then it blasts off toward Beech Hill and descends behind the trees.
Alan was either very brave or very crazy, because he went to investigate it. He took his flashlight and his shotgun and walked in the direction of where the craft had vanished. Elsie remained behind, anxiously watching from their kitchen window.
As Alan approached Beech Hill, the really strange things began. He experienced an overpowering sense of fear — not the fear you have when you walk in the dark, but real, true fear. This was different, more intense, as if every cell in his body was telling him to turn around and run. It felt as if something was observing him, taking in every aspect of his body and mind.
Then Alan heard it — a branch snapping close by. It was a sound that pierced the still night like a gunshot. He turned toward the noise, and what he saw next would never leave him. The figure, large in the darkness, was roughly the height of a tall man. The thing had black eyes, blinking, that Alan could see in the night. But the worst part? When he pointed his flashlight at it, he could see its face resembled some kind of dog… or werewolf.
As this thing starts creeping towards him, Alan doesn’t pause for even a moment – he raises his shotgun and pulls the trigger. But this hairy beast was quick, impossibly quick. It looked like it just moved aside of the shot like it knew it was coming. Alan didn’t stay around to find out what happened next. He turned and ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, running straight home.
When he arrived back to his house, he found the front door open, with Elsie standing there, frantic. She had heard the shotgun blast and noticed the beam of his flashlight shaking frantically as he ran back. Alan came through the door, shut it behind him, and locked every last lock they had. Then he had Elsie lock all the other doors, too.
For half an hour, Alan sat at their kitchen table, facing the back door, shotgun in hand. He was sure that thing was going to attempt a break-in at any moment. Nothing did, but it was a scary night.
The Wainwrights took the time to report their experience to UFO investigators and they have never budged from their story over the years. Unlike many folks who claim to have seen bizarre things, they stayed away from the press or profiting from their story. They didn’t even want their real names in the reports. When someone relates a wild story but doesn’t want notoriety or financial gain from it, you have to suspect that they may have truly witnessed something unbelievable, but real.

CHAPTER 7: The Black Circle In The Sky

One of the most spectacular UFO sightings ever reported in Pennsylvania took place on February 5th, 1971 around 8:30pm. Someone was driving on the Schuylkill Expressway outside Philadelphia when they spotted something that would make even the most exciting UFO sighting seem dull by comparison.
It began when they spotted several orange flames that looked like they were raining from the sky. At first they thought they were watching a plane going down for a crash landing. But then the falling flames did the impossible — they stopped falling and locked in the air. No aircraft on Earth can do that.
The orange flames were gone, replaced by a beautiful light show from the object, with bright, blue-white, pulsating colors. It could now be seen that it was kind of a black rectangular box, with what appeared to be rectangular windows going down the long side, The colors of the flames, strangely, would appear through the windows, and then disappear and be replaced with the blue-white pulsating colors again. The sequence repeated over and over.
The witness started driving again down the highway and became aware that they were going directly towards whatever this thing was. As they drew closer they saw that the flames were emanating from below what they now realized was not a rectangular craft, but more rounded – a disc shape. Without any warning, the object jumped from a dead stop to some 500 miles per hour in the blink of an eye.
With no twisting, this object then shot back from where it started. This maneuver was also described by the witness as something they had never seen, it basically ignored the laws of gravity and inertia.
At this point the witness was directly beneath this unknown craft, which they speculated was hovering about 400 feet above. They stopped their car to view the phenomena, and as they got out and looked up, they saw a perfect circle of total blackness in the night sky. They saw stars peeking around the edge of this black circle, which helped them understand they were staring up at the massive bottom of an astounding piece of machinery.

CHAPTER 8: Friday Night Lights In The Sky

We now move on to Jessup, a small Pennsylvania town, early September 1970. If you know anything about small-town Pennsylvania, you know that to a crowd like that, Friday night football is everything. You add to that the fact that everybody goes to the games — it’s like the whole town closes down because everyone’s watching the local high school team play.
A man named Frank just finished watching one of these Friday night games and was traveling home. Everything was perfectly normal until he was three blocks or so from his destination. That’s when he glanced up and saw something that would alter the course of his life forever. There was a massive silver disk flying toward him across the night sky. Frank guessed it was around 1,000 feet wide. The object was emitting a really bright light, yet was completely silent.
Frank was standing there for some minutes, astonished by what he was seeing. Eventually he pulled himself together and ran the remainder of the distance to his home. He ran in the front door, yelling and explaining to his bewildered parents what he’d just witnessed. Frank felt an urge to call the police immediately, but he didn’t want to alarm his parents. They advised him to think carefully about preparing that kind of report — in 1970, if you told people you saw a UFO you could get branded as the town weirdo real fast.
Later that night, Frank was peering out of his bedroom window when he spotted something that sent shivers up and down his spine. A black limousine parked directly in front of his house. There were four men inside, dressed in dark suits and fedora hats as though they had stepped out of the 1940s. These dudes were just sitting there, not moving at all, looking straight ahead like mannequins.
The next morning Frank awoke and was relieved to see the mysterious car had disappeared. His relief, however, was short-lived — the car returned that evening, and continued for the next few days before finally leaving the area for good.
The next day at school Frank discovered something that proved he wasn’t losing his mind. A few of his friends who were also at the football game told him they had also seen the strange craft. In fact, many people at the game saw it go directly over the football field. Frank later figured it was best to report what he’d seen to both the United States Air Force and NICAP (that’s the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena). But like so many other UFO witnesses, he never received any real explanation for what he had encountered that night.

CHAPTER 9: Playing Chicken With An Experienced Pilot

On May 21st, 1966, a pilot named William Powell experienced an event that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Powell was an 18,000-flight-hours pro. He had flown with the United States Air Force and worked as a commercial pilot for Dutch KLM Airlines. This was a man who knew the difference between standard aircraft and something that was out of the ordinary.
It was around 3 PM and at about 4,500 feet near Willow Grove, when Powell was piloting his Luscombe plane. The weather was ideal — clear skies, good visibility. He saw a handful of Navy jets climbing overhead, just taking off from Willow Grove Naval Air Station. Nothing unusual there — he saw that kind of thing all the time around this area.
But then he noticed something following behind those jets that was most definitely not normal. Before he could even do a double-take at what he was seeing, the object made a turn that no aircraft could ever pull off — a type of maneuver that would render a human pilot unconscious from G-forces. And then, the object turned and started directly towards Powell’s plane.
The closer the object got to Powell, the better he was able to see it — and what he saw astounded him. This thing had no wings. There was no visible means of propulsion, nothing to explain how it was flying. It was a distinct disc shape, 40 feet wide, with a dome on top and a bright red underside. Powell and his passenger, Muriel McClave, had an unobstructed view of it as it flew directly at that them, and streaked by their plane.
This was an extremely experienced pilot witnessing something during the middle of the day that absolutely violated all of his knowledge of flight. Powell did what any sane aviator would do, and contacted Willow Grove Naval Air station. But despite his credibility and qualifications, no one could account for what he’d witnessed that day.

CHAPTER 10: Mind Probing and Time Stopping

It’s summer of 1965 in New Kensington. Three teenagers were skateboarding and walking down an alley that led to a field — just another ordinary summer evening… until it wasn’t.
As they got to the edge of the field, something that came between them and the constellation of Andromeda in the sky sent them to a standstill. It was a big metallic, blue-grayish craft, with a pulsing red light on the bottom. The machine was unlike anything they had ever seen — perfectly smooth as if made of a single piece of metal with no seams or joints or rivets. And for all of it, it didn’t make a noise.
The craft had something that resembled a window, but not an ordinary window. It didn’t have a frame and edges — it was more like that section of the craft’s hull had just gone transparent, like a sci-fi forcefield one would see in a Hollywood film.
Peeking through this strange window, the teenagers could see two humanoid figures. They could see them only from head to waist, but they appeared mostly human except for their dark gray skin. One of the witnesses tried to get the humanoids’ attention by flailing his arms. The attempt appeared to work, as the witness suddenly felt an overwhelming sense that these beings were not only aware of his presence, but they were now probing and reading his mind. He turned to tell his friends about this feeling, but realized he wasn’t moving – neither were his friends or his surroundings. It was as if time had stopped for everything but him.
This lasted about a minute according to the witness, though he admitted he felt strange throughout the whole experience and could honestly not estimate the true amount of time that passed. And then, just like that, the UFO left – yet no one saw it begin its departure. One second, it was there, and the next, it was somewhere else. At that instant, his friends and surroundings “unfroze,” leaving him completely baffled as to what had just occurred. It was only after returning home and discovering it took them over an hour longer than it should have, that they began to suspect that something very bizarre had happened during that strange “frozen” part of time.
About a month later, the witness began recalling additional details from that night. He remembered being inside the craft, sitting on a silver bench with two other men who seemed to be just looking straight ahead, just like the other men had done outside. He recalled two figures, a male and a female, in tight, silvery-gray suits that left their neck and the soles of their feet exposed. The witness stood up off the bench and moved toward them, stepping into a domed area where he could see millions of stars rotating through another one of those seamless windows. Then — boom — the next thing he noticed, he was back on the ground, watching the object ascend into the skies.

CHAPTER 11: The First Saucers

While most of these incident took place after World War II when flying saucers entered the news cycle and became almost mainstream, UFOs were being spotted in Pennsylvania’s skies long before this. One of the first documented sightings occurred on October 1st, 1917. The Model T was the hot new car at the time, World War I was still raging, and still known as “The Great War”, and most people had yet to even see an airplane with their own eyes.
From Baldwin, on that autumn day, someone saw something astonishing flying into Pittsburgh. Keep in mind, in 1917, the Wright brothers had made their first flight only fourteen years before and planes were still very rudimentary machines. But what this person was describing was far ahead of its time. He mentioned seeing a two-toned object with a crystal-white interior that appeared to glow. Halfway through it was a row of pale purple bluish-gray lights that might have been windows.
This is decades before flying saucers became famous thanks to science-fiction movies and TV shows. Well before Roswell. This person would not have been influenced by modern ideas of what a UFO should look like or how one might act, yet the witness described something very similar to what people would report many years later.
Then in 1947, it all changed. That was the year pilots began reporting unusual craft in the sky, when newspapers first started using the phrase “flying saucers,” and when people all over America started sharing their own experiences with bizarre objects. Pennsylvania also had its share of sightings around this time, and some are remarkable.
June 13, 1947, in Oakmont: a married couple was walking down a dirt road near the Allegheny River, on their way to visit the girl’s parents. They stopped along the way to chat with an elderly couple who owned the produce fields on either side of the road. They had a little building where the older folks would wash their crops, and that’s where everybody was when they noticed a small bright light coming down from the sky towards the ground.
As the light approached, it became unbelievably bright, emitting a brilliant blue-white glow. The elderly woman was so scared, she made the sign of the cross. Then the object simply stopped in place, hovering directly above their heads in silence. Then after a few moments, it began moving toward them in small circles before it took off straight as an arrow through the sky and disappeared.
The couple ran directly to the witness’s parents’ home, where they reported their sighting to the Pittsburgh Observatory. They also knew they were looking at something extraordinary; as they described it, it “could not have been a plane or weather balloon, nor any invention existing at that time.”
Some three weeks later, on July 5, 1947, even more dramatic events unfolded in the city of Philadelphia. A 13-year-old boy was playing in the street when he saw something flash in the sky. When he looked up, he saw not just one but six strange objects. They were flat and shiny, like polished aluminum.
The kid yelled for his friends, and soon all the kids were watching the strange objects zooming overhead silently. Their excitement pulled adults out of their homes as well, and for something like five minutes, everyone gathered on the sides of the street, watching these mysterious craft until they vanished.

CHAPTER 12: Why Pennsylvania?

Why does Pennsylvania have so many UFO reports? That’s something researchers have been asking for more than a century, and do have theories about. Pennsylvania’s geography could have something to do with it. The state is between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Erie, and studies show that more than half of all UFO sightings occur near large bodies of water.
Something else that makes Pennsylvania’s UFO history especially compelling is that many of these sightings occurred before UFOs became a big news topic. That’s significant, because it means these witnesses weren’t just repeating stories they’d heard about or were being influenced by movies and TV shows.
Some researchers have pointed out that UFO sightings increased significantly after World War II, and certainly after we developed nuclear weapons. This brings about another somewhat wild theory – perhaps the war and creation of nuclear devices somehow drew attention to us from … somewhere else. Whether that “somewhere else” means other planets, other dimensions, or something we haven’t even dreamed of yet, that’s still up for debate.
Looking back at all of these cases, from the earliest documented sighting in 1917 to the Carbondale incident and beyond, you can see the unique place Pennsylvania occupies in UFO history. These were not random lights in the sky — these were life-changing encounters that challenged our understanding of what is possible.
Consider our three teenaged boys from Carbondale — they never budged from their story about what they saw in that lake, even amid claims that they were lying. Or the Wainwrights, who just wanted to be outside one October 2013 evening on their own porch minutes before they came face-to-face with something they would never be able to explain. Or William Powell, a seasoned aviator who witnessed something in broad daylight that challenged everything he knew about flying.
These witnesses were ordinary people — cops, families, pilots, kids simply cruising on their skateboards. They weren’t seeking notoriety or fame; they just told what they saw, despite the possibility that some would think them crazy.
The skies above Pennsylvania have witnessed some downright weird occurrences throughout the ages, who knows? Perhaps one day we will learn what all these people were seeing… or possibly even see it for ourselves.