- Jun 9
- 23 min read
There are many cryptids that aren’t really cryptids at all, but aliens. There are a few popular ones, like the Flatwoods Monster and Tall Grays, but most are pretty obscure, absent in popular media. Aliens, the creatures, not their flying crafts, usually fall into one of three categories: Generic Aliens, which are the two-eyed, two-armed, two-legged humanoids we’re most familiar with; Robotic Aliens, which are things that are machines or are within machines, like a space suit; and then there are Monster Aliens, which are less common and more bizarre.
While UFO sightings abound, claims of extraterrestrial contact, or even just a brief sighting of an alien, are very, very rare. Every US state has hundreds of UFO reports. Some states are hotspots, claiming to see strange things in the sky more often than others; Connecticut, a place you don’t particularly think of when discussing cryptids or aliens, reports a higher number of UFOs per resident than most other states. When you start reading the stories, the sightings, you may see a running pattern: red lights, white lights, cylindrical shapes, square windows, complete silence, quick disappearances…
Today, I want to talk about an alien that straddles two alien categories, that of the robot and the monster. Hi, I’m Ballyraven; I’ll be your alien guide as we go over the Old Saybrook Blockhead, and other strange things seen in this state’s sky. As I’m sure you guessed, this story takes place in Old Saybrook–a town in Connecticut and on the Connecticut River, where the water flows into the Long Island Sound. At the time, between 3 and 5,000 people lived in the area, none of whom saw or noticed anything out of the ordinary on the night of December 16, 1957.
However, one woman, Mary M. Starr, claimed to see something extraordinary.
She was home alone that night in her two-story cottage. At 10 o'clock, she went to bed. Some time later, around 2 or 3 in the morning, she guessed, a bright light woke her up. Her bedroom was being lit up by something outside. She rose and peeked out the window; in her backyard garden, she saw what she thought was a crashed or damaged airplane, a fuselage. Upon closer inspection, or as she put it, “when [her]... eyes really open[ed],” it wasn’t a plane, but a black or dark gray, cigar-shaped object. Looking at her witness sketch, I would describe it more football-shaped, with a bulging middle and tapering sides–but that’s just because the ends are thinner, sharper than the typical fat, rounded butt of a cigar. The UFO was brightly lit and had four square openings, like windows or portholes; it hovered above her clothesline, between her home and the shed. Mary estimated that the craft floated about 10 to 15 ft ft away from her home, 5 ft high in the air, and was somewhere between 20 and 30 ft in length, from end to end. It was completely featureless, aside from the square openings, which were beaming bright light.
Within the object, she saw two figures walking by; they passed by each other, heading in opposite directions. Each of the figures held up a right arm; the limbs lacked hands, or at least visible ones, ending in a squared off nub. Their heads weren’t human or human-like, but were see-through cubes, glass-like boxes. She believed them to be clear, square or rectangular helmets, rather than a creature’s actual head. Inside the shape’s center, was a bright red bulb or floating sphere. The light source colored the cube, making it glow a slighter red-orange. Below, the entities were wearing something she could only describe as a pale, yellow-white jacket, which flared outward, like a hanging bell. She couldn’t see anything else through the window, but nonetheless, estimated that those within could have only been 3 and a half to 4 ft tall, visualizing and remembering the craft as too shallow and short to contain anything bigger. She saw nothing else through the windows, except the shadowy shape of a third figure, which disappeared when she leaned against the window for a better view.
The square portholes began to fade and the UFO’s hull gradually glowed brighter and brighter, shining like burnished brass. On the craft’s top left, a 6-inch antenna rose; it rotated and swung back and forth rhythmically, sparkling with bright light. The UFO beamed, hovering in the air without moving or changing for about 5 minutes. Then the antennae retracted into the ship. The UFO began moving strangely, seemingly retracing its steps back up to the sky. Its movement was slow and graceful, smooth, giving it the appearance of gliding, even though it was scooting backward. It turned, making a right angle, revealing that its shape was more of a flattened ellipsoid and 6 ft thick. The UFO’s color faded to a dull, gray-ish blue. Then, dots of lights lit up one by one, outlining the rim of the object. The craft wobbled like a wave, dipping up and down, before edging around a corner of the house. At the end, it tilted sharply upward, and suddenly darted into the sky with incredible speed. All of this was done in complete silence.
This information comes from a NICAP–the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena–report. They were an American, civilian run, nonprofit organization that started in 1956 to study UFO incidents. At the time, they were seen as one of the more believable and respectable alien organizations. The group was accessible to the public, providing a space for people to report UFOs and encounters, which, in turn, would be investigated by a team. They, however, claimed to be skeptical of many fringe, extreme ideas, as well as abductions and close encounters.
Richard Hall and Isabel Lenore Davis investigated Mary’s case–both famous ufologists. Richard helped lobby Congress to hold public hearings and investigations of the UFO phenomenon, co-authored The UFO Evidence, and, later, was interviewed by the CIA about the possibility of UFOs being a threat to the US, in addition to becoming director of the Fund for UFO Research, and editor of the MUFON Journal. Isabel co-founded the Civilian Saucer Intelligence of NYC, co-authored Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955, as well as UFOS: A New Look, and was considered to be brilliant, intelligent, “and a fierce critic of…more outlandish saucer tales” by her peers. Both found the retired teacher with a Master’s Degree from Yale credible enough; predominantly because of her background, they felt “she had no conceivable reason to invent or embellish such a story.” Yet, they could find no corroborating witnesses to the baffling event; unfortunately, or conveniently, most of the other houses in her neighborhood were unoccupied at that time of year. Her neighbors may have been away for the holidays to spend time with family, as it was the 16th of Dec. They may have also been escaping the cold weather, as I suspect this was a wealthier neighborhood. Doing some digging on Mary, I stumbled across some papers in the Yale Archives belonging to a Mary M. Geran Star; it was a collection she submitted to their archive, letters, photos, and other memorabilia she had gathered over the course of her friendship with the Greek royal family and German nobility. While I don’t know for sure, I suspect that any friend to royals and nobles were likely well off themselves, which probably made her seem even more believable to the NICAP investigators. With no obvious reason to dismiss her claims, they published her story, sketches of the entity and its ship, and noted several similarities to earlier cases, those of the Seat Pleasant Spaceman and Turtle Shells Over Pittsburg, two cases we will cover at another time, both occurring in 1952.
But, that’s not exactly where the story ended.
Mary wasn’t the only person to witness a strange cigar-shaped thing in Connecticut’s nighttime sky. She wasn’t even the first. At the beginning of the year, on February 3, a little hour away from Old Saybrook, near Georgetown, another woman saw a cigar-shaped object. Ina Salter, in a report to the APRO, claimed to encounter it while driving on Route 53; it was about 15 ft long, hovered just above the ground, near the road, and had several visible portholes, which were about 20 inches in diameter and illuminated by a yellow light. Within the windows, she saw shadows moving around. As she passed by the craft, it bolted straight up, hovered for a few more seconds, then disappeared.
In the following decade, many similar objects were observed. Two people saw one in Greenwich; it also had red and white lights. Like Mary’s sighting, it wavered in the sky, up and down. In Waterford, a man spotted a dark, metallic, cigar-shaped object; one end glowed red, the other white. In Westport, someone saw bright white and red lights; this UFO wavered in the sky, too, as it flew over the road twice. That same morning, in the same area, at 1 am, a woman saw an elliptical object with flashing white lights and two white beams. It flew low in the sky, completely silent and slow. And in Wolcott, two witnesses saw a large cylindrical object hovering outside their window. It was 7 feet up off the ground and four feet from their window.
There are many more accounts continuing into the 70s, mentioning similar traits, similar nighttime happenings. In Newington, a fiery object; it made impossibly sharp right turns. When its color dimmed, windows on the side became visible. On another occasion, a teenager saw a shiny disc; it flew among the clouds with quick, abrupt motions for about a minute before disappearing. In North Granby, a woman and two children witnessed a glowing, red and orange bowl-shaped object; it was so bright that it hurt to look at. It moved quickly, but there were also moments where it just hovered. As they watched, a rod extended from one side for about 5 minutes. Then, it disappeared. In Wallingford, a father and son saw a bright silver object. It was bigger than a Boeing 707 and had two transparent domes on its top; on the side, there were three oblong windows, but it was otherwise featureless. In Putnam, two police officers chased after a large, glowing orange object; it wavered back and forth, as if fluttering side to side. Sometimes it moved fast, other moments slow. Before it left, it changed colors, turning pink. Not long after, another glowing pink object was seen in Hawthorne; it was cigar-shaped, bigger than a plane, and featureless aside from a swirl of gray smoke along its sides. And in Kensington, several motorists stopped to watch a bright white object in the sky, hovering just over the road; it was accompanied by a red light on each side.
And that doesn’t even begin to cover those not like the Old Saybrook Blockhead… A UFO phenomenon called “Christmas Lights”, where red, green, and sometimes blue and/or white lights appear, occurred in disc-form in Uncasville and Hartford, cycling colors over Barkhamsted Reservoir and Kent, and taking on a V-shape near Torrington, seemingly chasing a couple down Route 4. Then there were the domed discs, a classic shape for alien UFOs in popular media. A giant one was seen in broad daylight in Harwinton, two were seen rotating in New Britain, one with blinking red and white lights chased a man in Southport, a glowing one hovered over North Granby, a fiery one, and several plain, silver ones, zoomed over Winsted, another dove over Hartford, appeared before 14 boys and their camp counselor on Blueberry Mountain, and showed up in Enfield, causing televisions to malfunction. Triangular and V-UFOs, too: a silver one with black dots traveling about 2,000 mph and shooting a tail of fiery emissions over East Hartland during the day, two sightings of a soundless, then rumbling silver one in Woodstock, accompanied by electrical disruptions and static, and a boomerang over Sandy Hook. And we can’t forget the orbs, which were seen over Pleasant Valley, bright, orange balls of hovering light, and an egg-ish one in West Redding. Then, the stranger ones. In Willington, a man sees a bright white object that looks like a welding arc hovering over some power lines; it brought tears to his eyes. One of the most bizarre, in North Granby, a family reported several small, cloud-like rings with dark centers coming out from behind a storm cloud and speeding away.
That’s a lot to take in. Yet, it’s not even the best part. Mary isn’t even the only one to report seeing an alien figure in the state. Connecticut has sightings of all three kinds of alien. Ten, actually, including the Blockheads.
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Half an hour away from Old Saybrook, in Durham, on June 25, 1967, a man saw two cigar-shaped objects in the sky. Robert Luca watched from behind the wheel as two smaller objects came out of one of the bigger ones. The dots of light flew away, one east, the other west, overtop his car. Closer, he could make out that these smaller objects were discs, dull and metallic. They disappeared in the distance, descending like a falling leaf. When he turned around, he found himself at Hammonasset Beach–which was where he was initially driving to. He looked down at his watch; it was 2pm. He had no memory of what happened in the last three hours. Undergoing hypnosis years later, Robert was guided to remember more upsetting information. Being nude in a room lit indirectly by a blue-ish-white light. The floor was white. Being on a table. Two figures standing at his head and feet. They had large, bald heads, no noses, and tapered faces.
An hour away from Old Saybrook, in Avon, two separate, unrelated witness groups saw a robot-like creature standing on the side of the road on September 3, 1967. It moved slowly and stiffly, seeming to try and stop the cars passing by. It was clothed in a single, silver garment, which covered its hands and feet. On its head was a dark helmet. Both witnesses called the police, who found no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. The next day, the police received a second call. Two women saw a robot on the side of the road, in the same spot. The call came in at nearly the same time, only 15 minutes later in the day. As the witnesses’ car approached, the robot turned and looked at them directly, standing in the middle of the opposing lane of traffic; it moved, expectedly, robotically, was wearing a piece of clothing that covered its hands and feet, and its face was concealed by a dark hood. Cars swerved around it, as it trekked across the road.
An hour and a half away from Old Saybrook, in Winsted, two teenagers, Ruth Passini and Carol Luke, were looking out of a second-floor window when something caught their eye on September 15, 1967. In the distance, they saw an object about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle; it was flying low over a field, dipping up and down. They described it as being elliptical in shape and as glowing white, which turned to red, then back to white, gradually cycling between the two colors. The two watched for half an hour, their mothers eventually joining them. Then, they heard a noise. It was a puttering sound, like what you would hear from an old lawn mower starting up. The noise was coming from the barn, which sat about 50 ft away. Staring at the building, they saw two figures sprint from its door; the humanoids ran to the road, standing off to the side. From there, they looked up, staring at the house. After a few minutes, they ran across the road, standing near the home. The creatures were under 4 ft tall; one of them had a much bigger head than the other, disproportionately bulbous. When a car passed by and engulfed them in light, the UFO over the field dimmed and the two entities ran back across the road. They were shortly joined by a third small figure. Together, all at once, they ran away into the darkness. UFOs were seen elsewhere that night and throughout the following week.
A second sighting in Winsted, on February 21, 1968, a girl had an encounter. It began with a strange sound, a bloop-bloop noise. The 12 year old looked outside and saw a white, egg-shaped object. It was large, about the size of a car, and it hovered next to the railway station. A light beamed downward from the UFO, but didn’t touch the ground. Then, between 15 and 20 little men exited the ship, walking down the ray of light as if it were a bridge. They were about 3 ft tall, wore silver clothes, fishbowl-like helmets, and walked in a single file line. Once they reached the end of the light beam, they jumped off and onto the earth. Then, one by one, they climbed up the side of the railroad station, like Army men up a rope. On the roof, they dispersed in different directions. Frightened, the girl ran away from the window and hid in bed.
Eleven minutes away from Old Saybrook, in Westbrook, sometime in November 1971, a woman saw a silvery object pass over her on the highway, landing in an adjacent swamp. It was so close to her that she could see windows on the UFO–so close that she could even see inside the windows. Within, there were several figures, but she couldn’t make out any clear details. Frightened, she rushed home, feeling sick to her stomach. Coming through the door, she looked at the clock. It was 5:02. She glanced at it again. It was 5:20 and her husband was at the door. The loss of 18 minutes greatly disturbed her.
About an hour and fifteen minutes west of Old Saybrook, in Norwalk, on a summer night in 1973, a woman was driving when the radio broke up, playing only static. Changing station after station, they all screeched with loud interference. Then, a man’s voice began speaking through the static. Suddenly, she was no longer sitting in her car, but standing in a strange craft in front of a tall man. He was about 6 foot 4 with lightly colored hair, dressed in a metallic, one piece jump suit that had a triangular emblem on the chest. Around him were at least 200 other entities, going about their own tasks. He stared at her, his mouth not moving; yet, she heard his voice inside her head. He said, “Welcome, my friend, Mary Angel.” He told her that she was being studied and would continue to see him like this at regular intervals. She was brought to a room full of machinery. Inside were screens, things like computers, a constant humming, vibration, as well as a view of outer space. The man pointed, telling her they were looking out at the Guentatori-Elfi Galaxy. He also told her that numerous floods would soon occur. Blinking, she was back in her car. Time had jumped forward twenty minutes.
Nearly two hours away from Old Saybrook, in Kent, on September 12, 1973, something odd happened. Two 17 year old boys were driving when they saw flashing, colorful lights in the sky; looking up, there was also a large, oval object. They pulled over and watched it hover over the Housatonic River. As it spun in the sky, several more teens showed up, joining them. The craft eventually descended behind a ridge; while it was no longer visible, its glow shined over the hilltops. A group formed to find a better view. As they drove around, a dozen smaller lights appeared, flying in a circular pattern over the ridge. Then, suddenly, they formed a line and traveled north, seen by a multitude of other witnesses throughout the area. The teens tried to follow them, but lost track of the lights. Seeing a car parked on the side of the road, they stopped and asked the two girls inside if they had spotted anything unusual that night. They said no, but that they were waiting for a group of hikers that had told them an hour earlier, elsewhere, that they were traveling over the mountain and should meet them here. Then, out of nowhere, a group of 15 to 20 figures came jogging down the road, the same direction the teens had come from. Each hiker wore a helmet with a light on it, like an old miner’s hat, and carried poles or rods. As they traveled down the road, the group incoherently mumbled and chanted, running in two columns. As they passed by, the teens shouted questions at them, but received no answers or acknowledgements. Rounding a corner, the teens hopped back in their car and followed. Making the same turn, the road and hillsides were empty before them. A multitude of people were interviewed about this night by ufologists; three from this story were questioned. All claimed to experience a loss of two hours that night, happening immediately after encountering the hikers. During this chunk of time, they couldn’t remember what happened or what they did, waking up at home. One of their watches malfunctioned, sitting at 11:20 pm. A hypnotist tried to have a regression session with the teens, though claimed their inability to recall more was due to a mental block being placed inside their memories.
Less than an hour away from Old Saybrook, in Hamden, two teenagers had an alien encounter on January 11, 1976. Bobby, age 14, was walking to his friend's house in the falling snow when he saw something strange. About 400 ft away, near some sumac bushes, there was a floating, glowing figure. It had no discernible face and the back of its head was flat, wavy, like corduroy pants. Only visible from the waist up, the light coming off of it reached far above its body; the glow’s outer reaches had a less luminous, more silvery shine. Running to his friend’s house, he gathered Glen (age 13), Jerry (age 16), and a .22 rifle. Returning to the site, they saw the creature and shined their flashlight on it; when the light touched it, the entity fell backwards, behind a ridge. Before it disappeared from view, the light illuminated more details on the creature: it, in fact, had no facial features, nor did it have a neck or arms. Pointing the flashlight down at the ground, the creature returned, rising up from the ditch; it remained in view, even when faced again with the flashlight. After a few seconds, the being slowly ducked down behind the ridge again. When it peeked out from the bushes, Jerry shot at it twice. He missed, aiming too high. The creature dodged away a third time and wasn’t seen again.
Even more unbelievable, aliens were seen a second time in Hamden about a month later, on February 10. Two teens, Grey and Barnet, were walking up Denslow Hill when they heard something crashing around in the neighboring junkyard. One yelled, “Who’s there!” The noises changed; it was no longer the sound of metal scrap being tossed around, but something running through the underbrush. A green light flickered on to their other side; there was a wide field across from the junkyard. Up on the hilltop, about 25 ft away, the boys saw two pairs of short legs shuffling across the road. They were wearing shiny, smooth, one piece suits that were glowing a purple color. The boys estimated that the aliens’ waists came only about 20 - 22 inches above the road. When they cautiously approached, a bright white, lemon-shaped light appeared 15 ft off the side of the road, blinking. It floated gently up in the air, flying at a diagonal angle across the road, avoiding power lines; when the little craft reached a fairly high altitude, it paused. The UFO blinked with two red lights, then zoomed away.
About the same distance away from our original story, in Cheshire, on March 5, 1976, a family saw a UFO about a few thousand feet away from them, above the trees. The craft was very large, about 80 ft in diameter. On top of it, there was a translucent dome lined with gold lights and topped with a flashing, deep red light; below, there were holes where blue lights beamed. It descended lower in the sky, floating just above the swamp behind their house, hidden among a mass of foliage. They watched it and waited for 2 hours. Then, they decided to make a move. Two of the sons and their father hopped in a van, driving to get a closer look. As they headed down the road, they noticed something strange: it was unnaturally quiet. Nothing, not even the birds, were making noise. Finding no gaps or ways to get closer in the vehicle, they gave up and returned home. But, when they got back, they discovered someone had gone missing–their mother. Frantically, they scoured the house, checking every room, every closet, and the yard. But, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere. Then, out of nowhere, she was. Standing in the middle of the living room, she stared. Then, slowly, she tried to speak to them. But she couldn’t. Her words were impossible to understand, slurred and slow. Eventually, they made out a sentence, “I was in the bedroom.”
An hour later, everyone went to their rooms and tried to go to bed. Another hour later, the couple woke up; somehow, they had switched sides in bed. Neither remembered doing it or moving the other. Then, they both immediately began to feel nauseous. Incredibly nauseous. Getting up, feeling frightened, they walked around the house, only to discover that the back door was wide open. They immediately called for help. The next day, a UFO investigator came by; near the home, he found three wedge-shaped holes and several broken tree branches. A second UFO investigator questioned the family a few days later; they said they remembered more than they did the day after it happened, though it was fuzzy. They believed that in that strange hour, the one that took place after they laid down and woke up feeling ill, aliens had taken them aboard their spacecraft. The father recalled only one detailed scene. He was standing in a place like a cafeteria, where the things were eating; the aliens were wrinkly, with white-ish-gray skin, high cheekbones, tall foreheads, bald heads, and eyes 3 to 4 times the size of a human’s. He remembered one of them looking at him with disgust, as if saying “What are you doing here?” After a session of hypnosis, his wife remembered even more. She was guided to recall seeing several different kinds of aliens: ones that were shorter, about 4 ft tall; ones that were a little taller, between 5 and 5.5 ft tall, called “the doers”; then there were taller ones, 6 to 6.5 feet tall. The big ones had eyes like a cat, diamond-shaped and with a protective layer. When the pupils were thin, their eyes were speckles of yellow and green. When the pupils were wide, they turned completely yellow. The family continued to report contact with these aliens, claiming they had become able to telepathically communicate with them after being probed.
Connecticut has experienced a lot of weirdness over the last hundred years. Of course, more was to come. The state was part of the 1984 Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, or, more commonly known, the Westchester Boomerang. Thousands of UFO sightings were reported between March 1983 and June 1984 in southern New York and western Connecticut’s Fairfield County. People were seeing objects the size of a football field, in the shape of a V or circle, and accompanied by those Christmas lights: red, white, and green. The crafts could shoot straight up into the sky, hover for long periods, and were completely silent.
Things got heated when several guards at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant claimed to see something on June 14th and June 24th in 1984. According to them, a 900 foot long, V-shaped UFO hovered 300 yards over the plant for 15 minutes. One guard claimed it looked like helicopters in formation. They recounted that a commander gave orders to pull shotguns on it, but the thing disappeared before anything could be done. The guards approached Philip Imbrogno, who was a ufologist for the Center for UFO Studies, a privately funded research group founded by J. Allen Hynek, a scientific consultant for Project Blue Book. Philip’s investigation did not go over well. A power authority security officer, John Branciforte, actively dismissed the event as misinformation and hysteria, claiming that the guards were not armed with shotguns, nor were they asked to be. He also accused Philip of making the whole thing up, or, at least, taking what the guards said and stretching it dramatically. The New York Power Authority released a statement on the matter, saying that they believed the sightings were pranksters; they claimed that commercial and private pilots both frequently used the plant as a navigational landmark–it’s easy to see and there are no airspace restrictions. People who believed in alien UFOs, however, didn’t trust this or take it as a reasonable explanation. Sightings and reports continued, increased. Someone caught it on video, showing an object flying as its lights rotated counter-clockwise, completely silent. Giant, rigid triangles with changing lights were appearing everywhere. Some even thought that the UFOs were giving them signals through the lights, telling them something, maybe letting those below know that they knew they were watching.
Then, a police officer followed the lights one night. They led him to the Stormville Airport, in New York, where the mystery was solved. The UFO was a group of Cessna 152s flying in formation. The undersides and wings of the crafts were painted black, so they couldn’t be seen from below. They were also equipped with bright, color changing lights. Another officer spoke to the pilots; he claimed they “got a big kick out of it…” all. They didn’t get into trouble, nor were they asked to stop, as nothing they were doing was illegal. That February, in 1984, the Poughkeepsie Journal interviewed a pilot about the incident; he and the other pilots were "test[ing] their skills, flying in a V shape, using a rotating beacon and navigation lights. The formation might [have] appear[ed] motionless because it [was] so wide and [could] be seen from long distances." They began by practicing during the day, until they grew confident enough to try it at night. They got very good at it, too, flying in formations so tight that only 6 inches of space were between their wing tips. There was no evidence that the pilots were trying to drum up a UFO hoax, the media just ran with the story, blowing it out of hand. At first, they were shocked at what was going on. But then, they were amused by it all, calling themselves the Martians, changing up their shapes, and coordinating lights.
Many ufologists were not satisfied with this turn of events or explanation. While some reluctantly admitted that perhaps some of the year’s sightings were of these pilots, it was impossible that they all were. Some of the lights seemed to specifically avoid being filmed. A few prominent figures in the community thought it was all too illogical for such a banal resolution. Some thought it was a government coverup, the real lights belonging to aliens or secret US government tech. Most of those who were upset by this lackluster conclusion and steep decline in UFO sightings were, well, UFO authors whose careers depended on seeing UFOs, believing in UFOs–not finding less exciting, more likely, more credible explanations for them.
To close this episode, there is one more case from Connecticut, one that is more recent, too. On April 10, 2012, someone called the police, reporting that something fell from the sky, landing in Bantam Lake. It was giant, the size of a whale, and glowing green. At first, the unknown caller was dismissed, but then a second report came in. This time, it was sent in from a state trooper 10 miles away in Warren. He, too, saw something big fall from the sky. This had happened earlier, in the 60s, but was described as a small round object, bright red like a hot iron. It, however, happened an hour away south, on the Long Island Sound. There’s not a lot of information out there on this incident or the Giant Green Whale of Bantam Lake. What I was able to find, however, was that while the lake had never been searched or dredged for anything related to the incident, there’s compelling evidence that it was a meteor. Featured in a Connecticut Insider article, are several quotes from astrophysicist Brian Koberlein. In them, he notes that meteorites can glow green when the iron-nickle within them catches fire; meteorites burn up as they enter Earth’s atmosphere. They can also appear much larger than they are, seeming bigger, brighter when farther away, on the horizon–like how a full moon looks extra big in the sky when it is floating lower, near the horizon, but, nonetheless the moon is always the same size. An extra nail in the Giant Green Whale’s coffin, the sighting took place during the Lyrid meteor shower.
It is apt that our final two alien cases have somewhat tidy endings. Most strange things have sensible, yet disappointing explanations. So, do I believe aliens have flown over and landed in Connecticut, appeared before some lucky or unlucky citizen’s windows, erased their memories and probed their brains? In short, no. As Carl Sagan wrote in the Demon-Haunted World, “on so important a question, the evidence must be airtight. The more we want it to be true, the more careful we have to be. No witness's say-so is good enough. People make mistakes. People play practical jokes. People stretch the truth for money or attention or fame. People occasionally misunderstand what they're seeing. People sometimes even see things that aren't there.” None of these stories are accompanied by evidence. No photos. No videos. No photos of burn marks or goop or injuries. Just, unfortunately, human accounts excitedly investigated and discussed by people who want to believe, infiltrated by pseudoscientists and people who have much to gain. We’re not the most reliable bunch, even when we want to be, even when we try. Our memories are bad, fallible. We have perception errors, confirmation biases, selection biases. In fact, the formatting of these cases are an example of that. I’ve cherry picked sightings that resemble Mary Starr’s, leaving certain details out, as well as outlier data as a whole, when it wasn’t very interesting. For many of the cases, I haven't gone into the details, the reasonable explanations for them, the discrediting factors, the investigative errors and discrepancies, the bunk science, some of the really dark stuff that comes along with alien history. Instead, I’ve sorted and presented it all as entertainingly as I could. You may have also thought, wow, it’s strange how close all of these other alien contact cases are to each other; well, that is also a bit of magician work. Connecticut is the third smallest state in the US. You could drive from one side to the other in about 2 hours or less, and from top to bottom in under an hour and a half. All of these sightings are close not because they are connected or linked by anything, except being in the state of Connecticut. We are just good at finding patterns, thinking of reasons why, even where neither exists.
While I believe aliens may be somewhere out there, in some form, I don’t think they have been here, or are here, on Earth. I don’t think any of us has ever seen one or their ships. That’s all to say, aliens, cryptids, weird stuff, it’s neat. I like it. It’s interesting. None of it has to be real to be enjoyed–which is good, because none of it probably is.
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