Did UFOs Cause the 1965 Blackout?

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

On November 9, 1965, a huge portion of the Eastern United States experienced a power outage that began at 5:17 p.m. and lasted until 7:00 a.m. the next day in most areas. According to an article on the New England Historical Society website, it happened because maintenance workers “set a protective relay too low on a power line to Ontario, which then tripped the relay. It then sent power to other lines, overloading them.”  At the time, the entire U.S. was in the midst of a UFO flap, and there was speculation that UFOs had something to do with the outage. As far-fetched as that might seem, this was considered seriously by Saturday Review columnist John Fuller in his 1966 book, Incident at Exeter and was discussed in Congress in 1968 during a UFO symposium. A high-strangeness aspect to all this is that Oscar-nominated actor Stuart Whitman, claimed he was given an explanation by the occupants of two UFOs he saw in New York City the night of the blackout.

The UFO flap of 1965 was extensive. So much so, that Jerome Clark wrote a four-part series on it for Flying Saucer Review that was published in Volume 12, Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 6. In Part IV, he references Fuller’s book which mainly dealt with UFO sightings reported in the area of Exeter, New Hampshire. In some of these cases, saucers were described flying near, and sometimes touching, high-tension power lines. With this in mind, after the blackout, Fuller speculated that the saucer pilots had been making observations of power sources in preparation for the mischief they were planning. According to Clark, “even jaded UFOlogists” were disturbed by a pattern of blackouts that followed throughout North and South America.

The connection between UFOs and the blackout was brought up before members of the U.S. Congress at the “Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects” on July 20, 1968. Six scientists, including Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Carl Sagan, and Dr. James E. McDonald, were invited to present their views on the subject before the Committee on Astronautics.

McDonald was an atmospheric physicist who was deeply interested in the UFO phenomenon and was a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. He brought up the subject of the blackout after answering New York Representative William F. Ryan’s question about UFOs on radar saying there were “thousands” that were identified and an “impressive” number that weren’t. Ryan asked about “other events” associated with UFOs, and McDonald took this to mean physical effects. McDonald brought up the Levelland reports and described ten vehicles being stopped there in a small area within a two-hour period. He specifically mentioned that there was only “a trace” of rain and no thunder and lightning.

McDonald then, with some hesitancy, brought up the subject of UFO sightings near power stations that coincided with blackout periods calling the evidence “not as conclusive as the car-stopping phenomenon.” He specifically mentioned UFO sightings during blackouts in New York State; Tamaroa, Illinois; Shelbyville, Kentucky; and England.

McDonald recommended that Hynek be consulted regarding sightings in Manhattan, as he had interviewed witnesses there. Referring to the New York blackout, McDonald pointed out that while the pulse of current responsible for tripping a relay at an Ontario plant was never identified, there were UFOs seen over a substation in Syracuse, New York, where suspicion for the surge had been centered.

Ryan asked McDonald if any agency had investigated the New York blackout in terms of its relationship to UFOs. McDonald replied, “None at all.” He told Ryan that he had spoken to people with the Federal Power Commission and was “dissatisfied” with the amount of information he was able to gain. He said he was not going on the record as saying there was a “clear-cut cause and effect” relationship between UFOs and power outages, but he did say “it ought to be looked at.”

What wasn’t brought up before the committee was the claim by Stuart Whitman that he saw two UFOs hovering outside his room on the twelfth floor of a Manhattan hotel and that the occupants did some explaining for him about their role in the blackout. His story has appeared in various publications, including Clark’s article, and comes from the article written by Hollywood columnist Vernon Scott headlined “Stuart Whitman Sees Flying Saucer” that was published in the January 11, 1966 South Bay Daily Breeze.

According to Whitman:

One of them was orange, and the other was blue. They gave off a strange luminescent light, so I couldn’t see if there were portholes or who was in them. Then, I heard them speaking to me as if they were on a loudspeaker. They spoke to me in English. It may not have been audible to anyone else. They said they wanted to talk to me because I appeared to have no malice or hate. They said they were fearful of Earth because Earthlings were messing around with unknown quantities and might disrupt the balance of the universe or their planet.

The people in the UFO said the blackout was just a little demonstration of their power and that they could do a lot more with almost no effort. It served as a warning. They said they could stop our whole planet from functioning. They asked me to do what I could to fight malice, prejudice, and hate on Earth, and then they took off. I couldn’t say how big the objects were, but when they took off I felt elated. I wasn’t even shocked. And I know I wasn’t asleep because I was standing by the window and wide awake the entire time. I don’t know why they picked me as a contact. But I’ll swear on a Bible that I saw them out there and that they talked to me.”

Whitman starred in one of this writer’s favorite movies released in 1972 (which he probably did his best to forget), Night of the Lepus, about giant bunny rabbits terrorizing and killing people in small Arizona towns. Despite this error in judgement, he was a very successful actor who worked constantly and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor for his role in the 1961 movie, The Mark. As noted by Clark, Whitman “presumably had more to lose than to gain” in telling his story.

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