At around 6:30 P.M., Frances Kelp phoned a local radio station, WHJB, in Greensburg, where she spoke with John Murphy, the news director. An object or fireball, she said, had crashed into the woods near her home. Her two sons had gotten to within a half mile of the impact until she called them back; all three saw smoke rising above the trees and a bright object off to one side, which Kelp described as looking like a “four-pointed star.” State police and firefighters were on the scene quickly. Murphy was also there, interviewed Kelp and her sons in person, and saw the state police fire marshal walk into the woods with a Geiger counter, accompanied by a state investigator. These two men, Carl Metz and Paul Shipco, returned about fifteen minutes later. Murphy asked them if they found anything. “I’m not sure,” said Metz. Murphy kept trying to pry something out, when Metz said, “you’d better get your information from the army.”
Murphy drove out to the state police Troop A barracks in Greensburg. When he arrived, he said, there were “not only members of the United States Army there, but I also saw two men in air force uniforms, one of them wearing lieutenant’s bars.” Murphy found Captain Dussia of the Pennsylvania State Police who told him that after a thorough search, they were convinced “there [was] nothing whatsoever in the woods.” Murphy overheard Metz talking about going back in and asked Metz if he could go in, too. Sure, said Metz, if it was okay with the captain. Dussia said, “of course.” Just then, a state trooper came back in from the woods, talking about a pulsating blue light he saw in there. According to Murphy, the military was very interested in seeing this.
Back at the crash site, Murphy tried to enter the woods with Metz but was firmly told by Metz he could not enter. Evidently, somewhere on the road between Greensburg and Kecksburg, Metz had received new instructions. Before long, all entrances into the woods were cordoned off. Before this occurred, several firefighters had gotten inside. One of them, Jim Romansky, was interviewed years later by Stan Gordon, a researcher who had done extensive investigation into the incident. Romansky reached the stream bed where the object first touched down. It had cut a furrow into the bed and came to rest nearby. It was acorn-shaped, said Romansky, between nine and twelve feet in diameter, and had a gold band around the bottom with writing on it. It had no wings, motors, or fuselage. The writing looked like “ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics,” more precisely with characters of broken and straight lines, dots, rectangles, and circles. The metal was dented, but Romansky saw no rivets, seams, or welds.
Gordon found another witness, named Bill Bulebush, who had gotten nearly as close as had Romansky. He, too, described the object as acorn-shaped, with a gold band along the bottom, about twelve feet long and six feet in diameter. He could see bright blue sparks coming from it, but heard no sound.
Another man, Bill Weaver, was much farther from the object, but claimed to see it glowing. He saw four men dressed in “moon suits” carrying a large white box into the woods on a stretcher. Soon after, a man in a business suit ordered him from the area and threatened to take his car if he did not move it. Romansky also spoke of men in business suits that he thought were military. He said they began to order the firefighters out of the area.
The media covered the story almost exclusively as a fireball. Dr. William P. Bidelman, an astronomer at the University of Michigan, for example, stated, “It was undoubtedly a fireball.” Other astronomers chimed in with the same opinion, although none of them had seen the object. The air force said the object was not an aircraft, missile, or space debris. Thus, it seemed to be a meteorite. Adding to the evidence is the only known photograph of the object as it passed through the sky, which appeared in the February 1966 issue of Sky
In March 1966, Ivan Sanderson began to research the event and eventually sent a report to NICAP. He spoke with officers from many police desks, journalists, and witnesses. From these discussions and the available data, he calculated the object’s speed at just over 1,000 mph, far too slow for a meteor. Kevin Randle, who later investigated the crash at length, said Sanderson’s calculation may have been based on faulty assumptions. Even so, acknowledged Randle, if Sanderson’s calculations were off by a factor of ten, the object would still have been flying slower than the slowest speed ever recorded for a meteor, which is 27,000 mph. After investigating this at great length, Sanderson also determined something else of interest: the object appeared to change direction, turning southward at around Cleveland. Subsequent investigations, however, could not confirm this.
