by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
New Jersey, as everyone in UFO world is aware, was ground zero for a full-on flap involving what most witnesses reported as mysterious drones. What’s noteworthy is that this same region was where residents panicked during Orson Welles’s radio production of The War of the Worlds in 1938. It’s also the area where there were two flaps in 1966, one in January and another in October, with the most dramatic reports centered around the Wanaque Reservoir. In this blog, we’ll focus on the January flap. At that time, several different investigators arrived on the scene, and as a result, there are several different versions of what happened.
One person who took it upon himself to try and sort things out is a blogger who goes by the name “The Professor” who wrote about the January flap in two parts on his blogspot.com site The Big Study. The Professor identifies key witnesses and investigators, as well as publications of the day that covered the story. According to him, the main investigators were Lee Katchen and Alberto Paz from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Others he identifies are James W. Moseley (he calls him “the main clown of UFOlogy”) and his associates August Roberts (“one of that merry little band of screw-offs which included Gray Barker and Jim Moseley”) and Timothy Green Beckley.
The Professor puts together a timeline and presents a map with a pink (complains that it should have been red and blames his scanner), a blue, and an orange arc between Pequannock and Ringwood. These are meant to represent the path of a mysterious, brightly lit object with the pink line representing the first stage where it was seen on January 11, at around 6:20 p.m. over Ringwood before heading south and disappearing over the horizon. The blue line represents the return trip after being seen reappearing at around 6:45 p.m. in the south, and the orange line represents it moving back towards the south at around 8 p.m. after hanging around Raymond Dam on the Wanaque Reservoir for an hour. According to The Professor, it’s during the second trip that “everyone gets involved.” In part 2, he describes the events, names the investigators and witnesses, and names the publications that report on the events, and it’s from those that we’ll piece together the story.
NICAP published a report in the January-February 1966 UFO Investigator. According to The Professor, he couldn’t find anything in the NICAP files (they were in Chicago under the care of the Center for UFO Studies at the time and now reside at the National UFO Historical Research Center) and there’s nothing in the casework index files hosted on the NICAP website, so the Investigator is as close as we can get.
The article covering the case headlined “National Press Headlines UFOs” is on page one, and there is a picture of two of NICAP’s men in the field, Lee Katchen and Alberto Paz. According to the article, “the first known report” was made at 6:20 p.m. on January 11 by Paterson News editor Howard Ball. He is said to have pulled over while driving near Wanaque after seeing “an extremely bright light in the sky” that was “16-17 times brighter than a planet.”
According to the article, police switchboards became “jammed” with UFO reports by around 6:30, word spread, and “the Wanaque mayor, civil defense chief, and several councilmen went to the reservoir and spotted a light from atop the dam.” Shortly after 7:30, Officer George Dykman at Reservoir Police Headquarters is said to have seen a bright egg-shaped object and to have watched along with other witnesses as it stopped moving, turned, and hovered over the reservoir.
The object is described as sometimes flying around the reservoir in low, small circles and sometimes quickly changing altitude during the hour Dykman and the others reportedly watched it. According to the article, neither he nor the others heard a sound. A reservoir employee, Fred Stein, reported he saw a glow from the object reflected on the ice. His report apparently got misconstrued as the reader is told, “Garbling of this report evidently caused a widely-published account that a beam from the UFO had cut a large hole in the ice.”
Patrolman Charles Theodora of the Reservoir Police is said to have gotten a call from the Pompton Lakes Police in the early morning hours of January 13, telling him that they were chasing a UFO that was headed for the reservoir. According to the article, shortly after that, he saw a glowing object come over the pumping station, stop, and hover.
The article headlined “The Wanaque Reservoir Incident” on page 3 of the May-June 1966 APRO Bulletin provides the name of the mayor (Harry T. Wolfe) and the councilmen (Arthur Barton and Warren Hagstrom) and describes the object as “gliding oddly” (quotes in the account) and “changing color from white to red to green and back to white.” Stein is called “Stennes,” and the glow has turned into a “bolt of light” (quotes in the original) “which shot down as if ‘attracted to the water.’” According to the article, he said it seemed to come down from a porthole.
Despite The Professor’s derision of Jim Moseley and his associates, the account in the article on page 26 of Whole Number 64, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1966) of Jim Moseley’s magazine, Saucer News headlined “The Saucer Flap at Wanaque, New Jersey” is more thorough and detailed than those in the NICAP or the APRO publications. This may have something to do with the fact, as is pointed out in the article, that Wanaque is twenty miles from Moseley’s residence in Fort Lee. In this account, we get more witness names, including Civil Defense Director Bentyle Spencer, Councilman John Shutte, Wanaque Police Sergeant David Sisco and Patrolman Joseph Sisco. Specific sightings are mentioned including a daylight sighting of a silent, rapidly moving round white object reported by the wife of Joseph Sisco the day after his sighting on January 11, and a report by “two members of the C. B. Rangers” of a gray or black, 30-50 feet “fat cigar-shaped object” with an amber light at each end that hovered at treetop level at 1:45 a.m. on January 14. The two-way radio reception in the Ranger’s car was reportedly disrupted while the object was close by. Sergeant David Sisco Reading Saucer News
The visit by NICAP representatives is mentioned, and it is said they “left the erroneous impression with local police that they were official representatives of the U.S. Government in Washington, D.C.” As for the involvement of Saucer News investigators, it is mentioned that “among those who visited the Wanaque area in connection with this flap were Timothy Green Beckley, Michael G. Mann, Eugene Steinberg, and James Moseley of our Staff.” August Roberts is also named.
Cited as sources at the end of the article are the January 12 and 15 Jersey City, N.J. Journal, the January 12 Hackensack, N.J. Morning Call, and the January 17 and March 11 N.J. Evening News.
This case has endured as a classic, and there is a famous photo associated with it, but there is an aspect of the case that is not commonly reported. According to Allen H. Greenfield during an appearance on the VSY0010 episode (40:26) of the Vayse podcast, before the onset of the flap, Jim Moseley got “reeeeaaally drunk,” called the Wanaque Police, and falsely reported that a UFO was over the reservoir after looking at a map and picking it almost at random. Greenfield tells the hosts this is one reason he thinks that “reality as a whole is malleable.” Another person who was there was Gene Steinberg, who told a similar story in a personal communication during a taping of After The Paracast.