New Baden UFO Sighting

September 1954: A Glowing Box Over the Lake

A civilian out bass fishing on a lake near New Baden, Illinois, early one September morning in 1954 saw a rectangular object about the size of an automobile, squared off and with no bumpers. That’s how the Air Force’s Project 10073 record card describes it.

Sources disagree on the date. The record card gives September 13, 1954, while NICAP’s chronology lists September 18 at 4:10 a.m. NICAP also identifies the witness as an electrical engineer who watched “a glowing rectangular box-shaped object, the size of a car, that flew across the lake and over the trees.”

On the record card, a red and pinkish glow came from the upper left corner and the rest of the body glowed green and blue, as bright as a fluorescent light. The witness, who was slightly hard of hearing, heard no sound. The object sat about 10 degrees up in the south-southeast and was gone behind the trees by the lake after roughly six seconds.

The Wing Intelligence Officer and the Air Technical Intelligence Center found too little data for a firm answer. They suggested a meteor, given the short duration and luminous look, and also considered a reflection from an aircraft, though no aircraft were reported in the area.

March 1967: An Oval in the Field

At 2:00 a.m. on March 21, 1967, a woman and her daughter looking out a window saw a large glowing oval object sitting in a field, according to NICAP’s 1967 chronology, which lists the place as New Baden (Mascoutah). It had a bright light in the center, a ring of very bright red lights around its lower section and lighted panels at the base. Once they opened the window, it lifted without a sound, climbing at an angle until it leveled off around 30 feet up, then moved off.

A couple of days later the women checked the spot and found withered plants and depressions in the ground. The case made a listing of high strangeness UFO physical trace cases compiled by Ted Phillips, a researcher who specialized in landing trace cases. His entry for New Baden reads “multiple witness, landing, Air Force investigation, imprints, human effects, very odd liquid.”