The Old Saybrook Blockhead…. What do you think of it?

Two parts of this story are, well, I hesitate to say real or true, because that isn’t exactly correct, but not made up. You’ve likely not heard of the Blockheads unless you are very into aliens. There was an alien report from Old Saybrook, CT, from a woman named Mary M. Starr. With a brief search into it, I was not able to verify some of the UFO sources’ claims, such as that she was a Yale graduate with one or two master's degrees or that she was, in fact, a teacher. But I did stumble across some papers in the Yale Archives belonging to a Mary M. Geran Star, which were letters she submitted to their archive, letters, photos, and other memorabilia she had collected over the course of her friendship with the Greek royal family and German nobility. I have no interest in the wealthy and their correspondence, especially at the moment, in 2026, but perhaps there is mention of her sighting in the collection, as the materials are dated from 1910 to 1960, but I have my doubts. You may, however, gain insights into her character, or something like that, and feel you could be swayed to believe her more or less based on that extra bit of understanding. The link to these papers is Ref #6 on our website in the Old Saybrook Blockhead files, in the sources tab.

UFO sites are tricky to navigate, and their claims are always sketchy for a multitude of reasons. I go into them fully expecting to read lies, misunderstandings, or, well, it’s not always malicious, mind you, but certain unbelievable qualities are usually present. Needless to say, I try to look into everything. 

The Mary in these UFO investigations was a woman who lived in a two-story cottage on the water, near the location of Yale’s archive, in New Haven, CT; I find it plausible that these two women are one and the same and that maybe she did file a UFO report. While small details vary between sources, such as how many degrees she held, when the sighting took place, or how long after she reported it, the alien portion of it is mostly the same, albeit while also having some minute differences between them, such as color or other descriptions. Believers, of course, cite Starr as credible for, what I see at least, as a strange reason: because of her standing in the community and because she, allegedly, had no reason to lie. Unfortunately for her, she was the only person home that night, and all of her cottage neighbors were gone for the holiday or season. No one saw anything in the sky locally, and there were no traces of evidence left behind. Just because people seemingly have no reason to lie does not mean they have no reason to, nor that they need a reason to lie, anyway, or have done so accidentally. For me, statements, stories, and claims mean nothing without physical evidence to back them up. Even if I were Mary, I wouldn’t believe myself. I have, in fact, had an experience similar to this that I believed was a sighting of something at the time, sat on it for years before telling someone else, someone who claimed a similar experience, and now, much later, recognize it as a bad dream or something that might not have even happened, an implanted memory. Our brains are strange, not very good at remembering, and are very, very influenceable.

Personally, I do not believe aliens have ever visited Earth, though I do believe in aliens. If you’re interested, I can go into full detail about how or why I believe that at another time, but Carl Sagan’s book, “Demon-Haunted World,” puts it far more eloquently and understandably than I could ever hope to achieve. Nevertheless, alien accounts are interesting to me. It’s not that I think people are lying about them–though, they sometimes do, maliciously or for financial gain, popularity–but sometimes we see things and interpret them in ways that are impossible, not true, and I find that fascinating. 

Now, I don’t think Mary had an alien visit her bedroom window one winter night. We have no way of proving she did, and we also have no way of proving she didn’t. The only thing we have to go on is one woman’s word. We can try to think about the situation and see if it leads to a thread we can follow… Why would it appear there? Why would it just hover, open a window, close it, and leave? No one else saw it or picked up on it in the area, in the sky? Why would you wait more than a year to report such a terrifying, confusing thing? Is this another thing the government, local, state, or federal, is hiding? Has anyone described anything else like this? Did she talk about it with other, non-UFO-investigating people? I don’t know. 

I find the existence of glowing Cubeheads hard to believe. Maybe she was just incredibly lucky and happened to see something no one else ever has–yet. If it did actually happen, we wouldn’t know why they came down to Earth and exposed themselves to one woman and left, never to be heard from or seen again, anyway. I don’t think she is lying, if this investigation even is real and actually happened, but we have no real reason to take her at her word just because she is educated, and likely upper class. It seems more realistic that this is a case of a waking dream, a hallucination, some sort of a middle-of-the-night fantasy. Many people are willing to take stories and witness accounts like this at their word, but I don’t want to believe in anything without evidence, more solid proof. It’s too dangerous, in my opinion, to do so. But, it is a fun thought, and they are wildly evocative figures. If aliens must visit, I hope they are as weird and non-violent as this one story claimed them to be.

The second “true” part of this story is about a warehouse of missing Du Mont Television kinescopes. There is no murder, er, well, murders, connected to it, nor was there an investigation, robots, or red crystals, goo, and radioactive material, but thousands of tapes did disappear in the 1970s after being sold and moved elsewhere. Allegedly, the buyer dumped them in the East River, and no one has ever checked to see if that actually happened, where they ended up, or anything. There has never been a salvage-dive for the tapes, though, by now, they are likely damaged beyond recovery. Their disappearance is one that has removed nearly 20,000 television episodes produced by a pioneering TV network from our cultural archive. It is an interesting idea, and sort of a treasure hunt to embark on, or a mystery to solve. Yet, kinescopes were an old type of film that used photo emulsion–and this required silver. Many kinescopes were destroyed once better technology came along, the silver reclaimed. I just thought this little bit of history was interesting and wanted to talk about it. AI is a negative, ever-present part in our modern lives, and I wanted to connect thoughts and ideas about it (a media-consuming monster that could be useful but will likely be used only to harm and destroy by those who are more powerful or work in the shadows), with a cool alien story, and this minor mystery. Hope you enjoyed the tale overall, and let me know what you think! Do you believe? Why or why not?