The article below was published in the newspaper The Daily Courier, Connellsville, Pennsylvania, USA, on page 1, on July 8, 1947.
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[Sketch caption:] FOLLOWING REPORTS that a number of the mysterious "flying saucers" had actually been seen landing in mountains near St. Maries, Idaho (shown on map, right), the first official effort to track down one of the what-is-it begun by the town's mayor. Above is an artist's conception of what the now-you-see-them-now-you-don't discs might look like if they turn out to be man-made devices. (International)
By United Press
A "flying saucer" in the hand was worth $3,000 today, but those seen in the sky were still a dime a dozen. there were no takers for rewards of $1,000 each offered in Chicago, Los Angeles and Spokane for a genuine flying saucer.
The Army air and ground forces announced that they were investigating the reported cloud-hopping discs with an open mind. But privately, high-ranking Army officials said they believed the saucers were a hoax and that some persons were victims of hysteria.
One of the latest reported "saucers" was from Lillington, N. C., where two college students, Albert Dugan and Charles Cross, said they saw a "bright light* in the sky about 10 miles from Raleigh at 11:55 P. M. yesterday. Dugan said they first thought it was a star, but when it started moving they stopped their automobile and watched.
"It moved in a circular orbit and appeared to be elliptical in shape with blue light radiating from it, mostly around the edges," Dugan said. "We drove toward it, but it vanished. We watched it for about three minutes. It appeared to be under the clouds."
The Weather Bureau said the cloud bank was about 5,500 feet high.
Meanwhile, the mystery of the saucers took on an international flavor.
The discs, already reported over most of the 48 states and parts of Canada, were reported over Mexico City. Several persons telephoned the Mexican National Defense Ministry to report the discs flying "in a westerly direction." A ministry spokesman said he didn't believe them.
Russian vice Consul Eugene Tunatzev in Los Angeles scoffed at suggestions that the saucers might be from Russia.
"Russia respects the sovereignty of all governments and by no stretch of the imagination would it use another country for a proving ground," the vice consul said. "Russia has plenty of territory of its own for any scientific experimentation."
High-ranking U. S. Army officers agreed with Tunatzev. They discounted theories that the flying discs may be secret weapons for use in bacteriological warfare. They said it was significant hat none of the discs had yet registered on Army radar.
Those saucers were over Connellsville again yesterday.
That information came from Leroy Peterson and Joe Pilla, both residents of the North End of the city.
First information that the mysterious objects in the sky had been sighted here at all came yesterday from Mrs. G. E. Hart of Poplar Grove, who reported she had seen them about two weeks ago but had said nothing because she didn't attach too much importance to the fact and also because her husband had been inclined to laugh when she told him.
At 4:45 o'clock Monday afternoon Leroy Peterson called his office to say that at that very moment he was watching the discs -- "right over the Narrows."
"You ought to come down and see them for yourself," is what he told a courier reported.
"They looked like pie-pans to me," related Peterson.
He said it was difficult to follow the discs because of the misty weather.
Before the phone conversation was concluded he said "now they're going out of sight."
At 8 o'clock in the evening Joe Pilla called Radio Station WCVI here to report he was then watching the strange phenomena. Pilla lives in the veteran's housing project near Fayette Field.
He told the operator at the station that the objects looked "like pans" and that they seemed to be "going up Fayette street."
(Editors: R. DeWitt Miller, one of the world's foremost authorities on psychic phenomena and author of "Forgotten Mysteries," has spent 15 years accumulating authenticated cases histories on inexplicable happenings. In the following dispatch, Miller shows that the mysterious appearance of objects in the sky dates back to 150 years.)
By R. DEWITT MILLER
Written for the United Press
LOS ANGELES, July 8. -- There have been thousands of reliable reports during the last 150 years of strange things seen in the sky. There are at least 100 cases in which the queer objects were said to have "disk-like" form.
Never have reports of strange sky phenomena been so widespread ans so uniform as the "flying saucers."
On March 22, 1870, a flat, light-colored disc was observed by the ship "Lady of the Lak," then in mid - Atlantic between South America and Africa. The disc appeared to be of large size and seemed intelligently controlled. A report of it was made in the journal of the Royal Meteorological society and a sketch included. The sketch is strikingly similar to sketches made by observers of the flying saucers.
Other disks were seen in North Wales August 26, 1894, in India in 1839 and in Norway November 3, 1886.
It seems to me that the three most likely explanations - and at this point only guesses - are:
1. The Army and Navy are experimenting with a new weapon. Although they have denied it, there is much in favor of this explanation.
2. The disks actually are from Mars or somewhere outside the Earth. The fact that similar objects were seen before the invention of aircraft strengthens this explanation. There has been increasing evidence of life on some other planets. If they are Martians, I would like to meet one.
3. They are things out of other simensions of time and space. Certain thinkers in abstract science long have held that some other dimensional beings conceivably could enter out world.
Although many reports of the saucers are undoubtedly untrue or distorted, there is plenty of evidence that something very queer is going on.
This is not the first time strange things have occurred. But the previous ones have been "forgotten." Many weird things have crossed the skies of this Earth.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
