In 1966, a series of UAP sightings occurred in the Dexter, Michigan area between March 14th and March 20th, including police officers and sheriff’s deputies. These culminated in two main events; the first on a farm northwest of Dexter and the second on the campus of nearby Hillsdale College.
Following failed attempts to involve federal authorities in the investigation into the cause of the unusual sightings, efforts by a local congressional representative resulted in the United States Air Force sending the lead science consultant of Project Blue Book, Northwestern University astrophysicist Dr. J. Allen Hynek to the area on March 23rd. After reports of a cursory investigation, Hynek held a March 25th press conference to report his results.
Among other causes for the unexplained sightings, including fireworks and pranks, Hynek blamed the majority of witness accounts on a natural phenomenon where gasses trapped in a swamp can ignite and cause the illusion of objects and motion. Known more commonly as the “swamp gas” explanation, Hynek’s conclusion led to widespread frustration and ultimately a call by the then United States House of Representatives minority leader and future president Gerald R. Ford for a congressional investigation.
The ensuing hearings led to the creation of the Condon Committee, which concluded in 1969 that events like those witnessed in Michigan were of no scientific value. The Air Force shuttered Blue Book almost immediately thereafter, essentially ending the final official UAP investigation by any branch of the U.S. military in the 20th century.
As a result of the Michigan sightings and Hynek’s explanation, the term “swamp gas” is still often used as a metaphor for lazy or misleading explanations offered for UAP incidents.
The Beginning: Sheriffs Chase Lights in the Sky
On March 14th, 1966 at 3:50 a.m., Deputies Buford, Bushroe, and John Foster from the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department in Michigan called from their patrol car to report that “they saw some suspicious objects in the sky, disc, star-like colors, red and green, moving very fast, making sharp turns, having left to right movements, going in a Northwest direction.”¹
Twenty-four minutes later, Sheriffs from nearby Livingston County contacted the Washtenaw office to say they had also seen the objects and were sending a car to the area. Over the next few minutes, the Washtenaw office also received calls from the Ypsilanti Police Department and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department confirming they had also witnessed unusual lights. Police in Sylvania, Ohio also said they saw the object.²
In a purportedly official Sheriff’s complaint log released years later, the Washtenaw Sheriffs note that they called nearby Selfridge Air Force Base at 4:56 a.m. According to that report, officials at the base said, “they also had some objects over Lake Erie and were unable to get any ID from the objects.”³ Other reports from the time say that Selfridge AFB saw the object, but did not report having it on radar.⁴
A local paper reported that deputies saw a single red-green object at first, “moving at what were described as fantastic speeds.” That same report says that the object would zoom straight upward, stop, hover momentarily in the air, and then speed straight downward”⁵
The deputies then say the object was joined by a second object at about 4:30 a.m. Then two more appeared about 45 minutes later, bringing the total to four.
“The four objects flew in tight formation, still exhibiting what deputies called great speed and maneuverability,” the same newspaper explains. “Finally about 5:30 a.m., the four objects made a wide arc in the sky, turned toward the northwest, and sped out of sight, the officers” The same article indicates that the Air Force did not see the objects on radar, and also confirmed no government aircraft were in the Washtenaw area at the time.⁶
Within days another police sighting occurred.
On March 17th, Milan, Michigan Sheriff Sergeant Nuel K. Schneider and Deputy David Fitzpatrick reported three or four “top-like” objects darting around the sky at 4:25 a.m. Fitzpatrick took pictures.⁷
Years later, former Washtenaw County Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey recalled the incident.
“My men seen most of the UFOs,” he said. “The reports came to me naturally. In the morning, when I read the reports about a UFO being sighted by this one and that one and somebody different. And, in fact, one of my officers, I remember him coming in, and he took some pictures of the UFO.”⁸
“It moved very rapidly at any speed, or rather, any direction it wanted to go,” said Schneider. “Why, it could change and go to the right or the left or go crossways without hesitating a bit.”⁹
When asked by Walter Cronkite in his 1966 CBS Special “UFO: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy?” what he thought it was, Schneider said, “Well, if they call it a flying saucer that’s what it is.”¹⁰
“I know my men and I trust their reports,” Harvey told the Ann Arbor News on March 22, 1969. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure they have seen something aloft.”¹¹
Another officer, David Severance, made a drawing of the purported flying saucer from witness accounts.¹²
Two More Sightings
Within days, new reports of lights in the sky were coming into the local authorities. Two of those cases involved multiple witnesses and led to the formal investigation of the series of events.
Mannor Farm
On March 20th, 1966, at about 8:30 p.m., local Dexter, Michigan truck driver Frank Mannor was eating dinner with his wife and their 18-year-old son Ronald when they heard a commotion.¹³
“Well, first beginning, we were watching television we have six dogs here and they started raising a fuss, which they never do much,” Mannor told Walter Cronkite of CBS News at the time. “I went outside and give a yell at ‘em, and as I turned around and come back on the porch, I looked to north of me, an uh, and there were, looked like a fallen star, or bigger. It was red, kind of coming down on a 40, about a 45, and so then I watched it and I was gonna see if it landed and then maybe go down and see what it was. Then when it got to the top of the trees it stopped, and a blue and white light come on. And I looked at it and I thought I was seeing things.”¹⁴
Mannor and his son decided to approach the object to see what it was.
“I got within five hundred yards of the thing and it looked pyramid-shaped,” Mannor told Cronkite. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mannor also said the object appeared to be about the size of a car. It had a haze under it as it hovered then rose to treetop level and came back down while changing colors. Mannor and his son reported that the object made a noise like a high-pitched whine.
“We got to about five hundred yards of the thing,” Mannor told other interviewers at the time. “It was sort of shaped like a pyramid, with a blue-green light on the right-hand side and on the left, a white light. I didn’t see no antenna or porthole. The body was like a yellowish coral rock and looked like it had holes in it—sort of like if you took a piece of cardboard box and split it open. You couldn’t see it too good because it was surrounded with heat waves, like you see on the desert. The white light turned to a blood red as we got close to it and Ron said, ‘Look at that horrible thing.’”¹⁵
Mannor’s wife phoned the Dexter police, and as a result, police chief Robert Taylor and patrolman N.G. Lee drove to the Mannor residence. The officers arrived around 10:30 p.m. when they saw the object and also heard the sound. Taylor said he watched the object through binoculars as it pulsated red with a light on each end.¹⁶ The CBS report says the object hung over the Mannor farm for a total of four hours before disappearing to the northwest.
Hillsdale College
On March 21st, 1966, 87 witnesses from nearby Hillsdale College say they also saw a long, football-shaped “intense silver-white light” near their college dormitory.¹⁷
“We suddenly spotted what appeared to be this strange light in the arb,” recalled Hillsdale class of 1969 student Josephine Evans in a 2015 Hillsdale Collegian story on the incident. “It was odd the way the lights were, but it was also weird the way [the UFO] traveled.”¹⁸
Three days after the incident, fellow student Gidget Kohn wrote about the experience for the Collegian.
“There was a glow around it and the lights appeared to be pulsating,” explained Kohn. “The glow was gone and there were three lights which were yellow-white…then the middle light turned red and then the one on the left. [We] watched for about 10 minutes and then the object seemed to move up and then to the right and left very slightly.”¹⁹
Kohn and her fellow students became concerned when the object seemed to move closer to their dorm, so they contacted Hillsdale Civil Defense Director Buck Van Horn. The students remained inside their dormitory due to curfew while Van Horn kept an eye on the object as it continued to move in “bizarre” ways and flashed different colors.
“It is not really necessary to describe all the movements,” wrote Kohn. “Let it suffice to say that it moved like nothing earthly and Mr. Van Horn was seeing it too.”²⁰
Hillsdale police officers Harold Hess and Jerry Wise were on patrol that night, and also reported seeing the object which they say was about a mile away.
“Then, over by the college, we saw a real brilliant light in the sky at a low altitude,” Hess recalled. “You couldn’t look at it, it was so bright.”²¹
The officers drove to the location and spotted an object hanging in the sky.
“It wasn’t a chopper. There was no humming. I took my weapon out. Jerry told me to put it back,” Hess recalled. “‘Whatever it is, I don’t think it’ll bother it one bit what you’ve got at your side,’ Jerry told me.”
The officer said the object split in two and raced off in different directions. They moved to their police car to call in the incident but were met with only static.
“We got into our patrol car and we couldn’t transmit. We just got static,” Hess said. “It’s one of those things that runs your hair up on the back of your head just thinking about it.”²²
Air Force Investigation Finds Crescent Moon, Venus, and Swamp Gas
Local authorities including many of the officers involved reached out to federal agencies for help. After no immediate response, local congressional representative Weston Vivian got the United States Air Force to act. Major Hector Quintanilla who headed the force’s official UAP investigations unit “Project Blue Book” tasked a consultant, Northwestern University’s Ph.D. astrophysicist Dr. J. Allen Hynek, to visit the area to try to explain the sightings.²³
Hynek arrived on March 23rd and was greeted by Sheriff Harvey.
“When he got here, we got in my car and we went to Dexter because this farmer had a sighting in his backyard,” recalled Harvey. “Professor Hynek and myself observed the grass, matted down, in a long big circle, where something had landed there and it’s gone. And this is what that farmer reported. That this object came there, it landed for a few minutes and so on, and then took off.”²⁴
Media accounts indicate Hynek was frustrated with the “near hysteria” at the scene when he arrived at the farm.²⁵
“It’s like reports from people who witness a fire,” he told the press. “You get as many different facts as you get people who saw the fire. So far, all I’ve been able to come up with is reports of a variety of lights.”
Hynek conducted an investigation of the Mannor Farm and the Hillsdale College locations, including speaking with civilian witnesses and police officers involved in the incidents. On March 25th, Hynek called a press conference at the Detroit Press Club which was attended by over 60 members of the media to explain the sightings. His conclusion? Nearly all of the witnesses, in particular those from the Mannor Farm and Hillsdale College, had seen nothing more than a crescent moon, Venus, and common swamp gas.²⁶
According to the Ann Arbor News, “the scientist pointed out that rotting vegetation in swamps produce gasses which are trapped by the ice and winter conditions. When a spring thaw occurs, the gasses are released. These gasses ignite into a chemical flame of luminescence, which moves quickly and freely about, Hynek said.”²⁷
“I’ve had many, many letters pointing out that they as children on the farm had had many experiences with swamp lights, and that this was obviously the thing that it was, and they couldn’t understand why the people in Michigan got so excited over swamp lights,” Hynek said at the press conference. “And the illusion of motion frequently is given by the fact that a little bit of swamp light appears here, it goes out, another one appears over here that goes out then, but the illusion as viewed from a distance is that the objects have moved back and forth. And sometimes as gas will gather into a ball and actually float away.”
At the same press conference, Hynek dismissed the pictures taken by Fitzpatrick as merely long exposures of Venus and a rising crescent moon.
“I have determined that these pictures without any question – as would be apparent to any astronomer – were trails made as a result of a camera time exposure of the rising crescent moon on the right and the planet Venus,” Hynek said. ²⁸
“A dismal swamp is a most unlikely place for a visit from outer space,” Hynek also said at the press conference, before quashing some of the other more popular theories of the public at the time. “It is not a place where a helicopter would hover for several hours, or where a soundless secret device would be tested.”
Reactions to Hynek’s “Swamp Gas” Explanation Swift and Negative
The reactions to Hynek’s explanation were swift and negative.
“With all due respect to Dr. Hynek, I’m not ready to accept this weak excuse of gas from marshes,” Sheriff Harvey told reporters at the time. “I do believe my men saw some type of vehicle in the sky.”²⁹
Hynek’s explanation, Harvey theorized years later, wasn’t necessarily coming from the scientist, but may have originated from a phone call Hynek had with his higher-ups at Blue Book moments before the press conference.
“A few minutes ago you didn’t know what it was, but now you know that it’s swamp gas because you talked to Washington,” Harvey recalled in 2022. “And he says, ‘I was told to say this.’”³⁰
One 1966 news report quoted unnamed Sheriff’s deputies, who were also skeptical of Hynek’s explanations.
“This moon and Venus thing is just too much to believe,” one unnamed deputy said. “Since when is the moon acting like a jumping jack?”³¹
Dexter Village Police Chief Robert Taylor, who also witnessed the object at the Mannor farm told media he isn’t sure what he saw, “but it wasn’t swamp gas.”³²
Frank Mannor was equally dissatisfied with the swamp gas answer.
“I spent time on Army maneuvers in the swamps of Louisiana during World War II,” the Ann Arrbor News recalled Mannor saying in his 1983 obituary. “I’ve seen plenty of swamp gas. This wasn’t it. We saw what we saw, all right.”³³
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” said Mannor in another 1966 report. “And my son has 20-20 vision. We both can’t be wrong.”³⁴
Mannor’s wife echoed the sentiments, telling one local paper, “I’m no professor and I’m not as educated as him (Hynek), but this explanation is not right,” before adding that her son and husband “just wouldn’t lie.”
“I saw it and my husband and son saw it,” she told local media at the time. “I think there’s something going on the people don’t know about. I’m scared. I want to pack up and move.”
As far as the Fitzpatrick photos, one media report on the Hynek press conference noted that “under questioning, Hynek failed to explain why a half dozen other stars visible in Fitzpatrick’s pictures are not also elongated and streaked from the time exposure position of the camera.”³⁵
That same article notes that “the scientist was also unable to explain to reporter’s satisfaction how the moon or Venus could be seen by Fitzpatrick and Sheriff’s Sergeant Neul K. Schneider making lightning-like movement upward, downward and to either side.”
The Hillsdale College witnesses were equally disappointed in the swamp gas explanation provided by Hynek.
“It was my considerate opinion that Dr. Hynek had his mind made up as to what his findings would be before he ever reached the City of Hillsdale,” said Van Horn in a May 26, 1966, Collegian article. “I also observed that his main line of questioning was relative only to that which would fit the Marsh Gas Theory.”³⁶
Officer Hess agreed.
“I don’t believe it had anything to do with swamp gas. This was just slow, huge. Swamp gas would never be bright. It was like looking into 20 spotlights,” he said. “They’ll never convince me it was swamp gas. I just truly felt it was a UFO. I have no knowledge as to what it was, no speculation as to what it could have been.”³⁷
“Dr. Hynek came to Hillsdale and I think he just wanted to get rid of us,” recalled Evans in 2015. “Hynek was pressured to play it down. Makes you wonder if there’s some kind of cover-up.”³⁸
“It was a UFO,” she added. “I’m convinced to this day that’s what it was.”
In defense of Van Horn and his college coeds, Hillsdale College’s director of Public Affairs Milton M. Ferguson spoke to the media at the time.
“What these people saw had no resemblance to rockets or flares, “said Ferguson, highlighting some of the alternatives to swamp gas offered by Hynek, including the possibility that what the coeds witnessed was simply local children playing with flares. “I don’t know what it was nor do the people who saw it, but this is trying to explain it arbitrarily. The Air Force is going to get into trouble going on in this way. It seems like a whitewash.”³⁹
Congressional Hearings & the Termination of Blue Book
Equally dissatisfied with the swamp gas explanation, and having fielded a number of calls from frustrated constituents, House minority leader and future U.S. President Gerald R. Ford immediately issued a formal request for congressional hearings into the matter.
“In light of these new sightings and incidents,” Ford wrote, “it would be a very wholesome thing for a Committee of the congress to conduct a number of hearings and to call responsible witnesses from the executive branch (of the government) and witnesses who say they have seen these objects.”⁴⁰
“I think the American people would feel better if there was a full-blown investigation of these incidents,” Ford wrote, “which some persons allege have taken place.”
A follow-up press release was issued three days after the press conference specifically calling out the swamp gas explanation.
“Ford is not satisfied with the Air Force investigation of the recent sightings in Michigan and describes the “swamp gas” version given by astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek as “flippant,”” the statement reads.
Ford also sent a letter to Representative George P. Miller, the Chair of the Science and Astronautics Committee, and Representative L. Mendel Rivers, the Chair of the Armed Services Committee, calling for hearings and refuting the swamp gas explanation.
“The Air Force sent a consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University to Michigan to investigate the various reports;” Ford’s letter explains, “and he dismissed all of them as the product of college student pranks or swamp gas or an impression created by the rising crescent moon and the planet Venus. I do not agree that all of these reports can be or should be so easily explained away.”⁴¹
Ford’s efforts were a success, and in April of 1966, the U.S. Congress held the first hearings designed to explain UAP incidents, including those in Michigan, until the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings in May of 2022⁴². The result of those original 1966 hearings was a formal recommendation that an outside consultant should be brought in to review all of the Blue Book evidence. University of Colorado physicist Edward Condon helmed that effort, one which became known simply as the “Condon Committee.”
The ensuing report issued by the group in 1969, often referred to as the “Condon Report,”⁴³ found that UAP sightings offered “no scientific value” and were not a threat to America’s armed services, effectively ending the Air Force’s Blue Book. No further official efforts were undertaken by any branch of the U.S. Military for nearly fifty years.⁴⁴
Unconfirmed Reports
In her 1966 written account of the Hillsdale College sightings, Bridget Kohn wrote that subsequent “testing of the arb revealed high levels of radiation, boron, and destruction of microscopic plant and animal life.”⁴⁵ No report with these results is in the official record.
In his book “Alien Shades of Grey,” retired Air Force engineer Ray Szymanski says he spoke with two unnamed Air Force pilots who tracked the unknown craft on radar and even gave chase in their fighter jets.⁴⁶
Specifically, Szymanksi says that according to over 40 hours of interviews he conducted with the pilots, the two Air Force captains were sent from Selfridge Air Force Base to the Washtenaw area to investigate reports of UAPs. Szymanski says the pilots were in the air for about 90 minutes, where they used radar from their own jets and from the military control center to find and track the object.⁴⁷
“One point of interest is they believe that it stopped in order to give (the pilots) a chance to catch up with it,” Szymanski said in a 2021 media story about his book. “It was taunting them.”⁴⁸
Szymanski also says the pilots chased the saucer-like object for a number of minutes before it made a sharp 90-degree turn and disappeared into the horizon “in the blink of an eye.”
“You’ve got to take everything to bedrock, and I’ve done that with this individual,” Szymanski said. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he and his wingman, not only intercepted that UFO and had visual sighting of it, but they also had a radar sighting of it, which means it was a solid object.”⁴⁹
Years later, unconfirmed reports of a Washtenaw Sheriff ‘complaint log’ from the March 14th incident came to light. If authentic, it also seems to imply that Selfridge AFB had tracked the object on radar.⁵⁰
“To all of those who vehemently denied that you saw swamp gas, you are hereby believed,” said Szymanski in his book. “And someone owes you a big apology.”⁵¹
Legacy of Michigan Swamp Gas Sightings
The sighting gained Dexter area truck driver Frank Mannor a level of notoriety, but he told Walter Cronkite at the time that he wishes it would have never happened.
“Beer bottles thrown,” said Mannor, motioning toward litter left around his car by enthusiasts. “Look at my windshield. What would you think if someone was throwing beer bottles at your house, stand out in the middle of the road screaming ‘you nut, you fanatic!’ and all that? What would you think?”⁵²
When asked by Cronkite if he was “sorry now that you did tell people what you saw,” Mannor didn’t hesitate.
“Yes, I am, I am sorry,” he said. “Not that it’s not the truth, it’s just the reaction of the people. They think you’re a nut, to tell you the truth, that’s just what they figure you are. And I’m not gonna take it no more, I don’t want nobody down in here, just leave me alone.”
Mannor went even further, saying, “And if that thing lands right there by that pump, I’d never say a word. Then he got out and talked to me, I wouldn’t tell nobody. That’s just the way I feel. I’m bitter and disgusted with the whole matter. And if people’s gonna act like that, I hope one lands right in Ann Arbor or right in the middle of Detroit.”
Hillsdale College Witness Josephine Evans shared her feelings in her 2015 recollections of the incident.
“It was the most unusual thing that happened to me in college. And it was very interesting,” she said, noting that she hadn’t even considered the possibility of UFOs being real before seeing one herself. “I didn’t realize how unusual it was or interesting until much later. You grow up and look back and say, ‘holy moly, did that really happen?’”⁵³
In 2015, Officer Hess also said his recollection of the incident is still sharp.
“It’s just one of those things you never forget even as your memory fails,” he said.⁵⁴
In the 2022 University of Michigan documentary, Sheriff Harvey also shared his feelings regarding the idea that he and his men were fabricating the whole event for some sort of fame or attention.
“Nah, my deputies weren’t looking for notoriety, and they didn’t want it. And they weren’t out just purposely looking for flying saucers. They just encountered it, because we had people calling up spotting these things. And I believe that young man, that farmer in Dexter, he seen something. He said, ‘It came down.’ I believe him.”⁵⁵
Conclusion
While no universally accepted explanations exist for the incidents around Dexter, Michigan in March of 1966, the fallout essentially led to the end of Project Blue Book. Hynek’s explanation also provided UAP believers and skeptics alike with the term “swamp gas”, which both still use to this day to highlight insufficient explanations of UAPs.
