The 1984 Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, also called "The Westchester Boomerang", were UFO sightings that stretched throughout 1983–1984 in New York and Western Connecticut. Pilots flew Cessna 152s in tight formation with bright lights that could change colors. State police reported that the pilots expressed amusement at the confusion caused by their hoax. Subsequent news stories, books, and other publicity helped make the sightings significant in local history and ufology lore.
Event
Reports primarily occurred from March 1983 through the
summer of 1984, in the Hudson Valley region of the Northeastern United States,
including Westchester County, Dutchess County, and Putnam County in New York
and Fairfield County in Connecticut. Residents reported seeing objects about
the size of an American football field, "usually
in a V-shape or a circle", according to the New York Times, "absolutely noiseless and outlined in
brilliant lights of white, red or green". The objects were also
described as being able to shoot straight up in the sky and hover in the air
for extended periods.
Indian Point power
plant sightings
Center for UFO Studies UFOlogist Philip Imbrogno stated he
was approached by several guards from the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant.
According to Imbrogno, on June 14 and July 24, 1984, the guards saw a 900-foot
UFO hovering over the plant for 15 minutes. One security guard said it was 100
feet long and 300 yards above the plant and looked like helicopters in a
V-formation. The security guard said, "that
the guards broke out the shotguns". Imbrogno told The Journal News
that "the commander gave the order
to pull out the shotguns, and they summoned Camp Smith, but we have no
documentation".
A power authority security coordinator, John Branciforte
said, "I think people are going to
publish stories on hysteria (and) misinformation. As far as I'm concerned, it's
pure speculation." Branciforte stated that officers did not arm
themselves with shotguns and that Imbrogno "could
possibly be making it up or he took what they (witnesses) gave him and
stretched it out." A spokesman for the New York Power Authority (NYPA)
and Sergeant Spiro for Troop K of the New York State Police said "they believed the sightings were
Cessna 152s flown by pranksters out of Stormville Airport." Patrick stated
that "pilots of private and commercial planes use the plant as a 'handy
landmark' when flying nearby. ’From the air, it is easy to pick out... I don't
know of any regulations that restrict the airspace around Indian Point".
Spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Brian
Norris said they received the FOIA request from Imbrogno for the Indian Point
incident but had "no documentation
of the sighting".
Other reports
On July 24, Brewster resident Bob Pozzuoli videotaped lights
that, to Pozzuoli, appeared to be an object flying as its lights rotated
counter-clockwise. No sound from the lights was audible on the audio portion of
the recording.
William A. Pollard, driving on Interstate 84, recounted to
the New York Times that he saw an object hovering about 30 feet from the ground
in a field, "a gigantic triangle
with lights". It shot straight up after turning off its lights.
Pollard said he had seen the lights many times, but the first time was very
different from everything he saw later; it was "rigid".
Mahopac resident Irene Lunn reported a sighting on Monday,
August 20, 1984, at about 9pm. She said it was heading South over a pond, "just clearing the trees....There was
no sound at all, you could hear the crickets... about three-quarters the size
of my house, with an L-shaped structure suspended underneath it... At one
point, all the lights went green, then red, and then they went back to a
pattern of green red, and white. I felt like it was letting us know it knew
we were watching it. That was scary. It went on for about 10 minutes."
Identification
A state police officer of Troop K followed the lights to the
small Stormville Airport in Dutchess County and reported back to Sgt. Kenneth
V. Spiro: "It was a group of light
planes. They fly in formation. The undersides and under the wings are painted
black, so they can't be seen from the ground. The planes are rigged with bright
lights that they can turn from one color to another. It's the lights that give
the shape to the U.F.O." According to the police officer who spoke to
a couple of the pilots, "they're
getting a big kick out of it. There's no violation of the law here."
According to Timothy L. Hartnett, the deputy director of the
Eastern region of the FAA, planes "can
fly as close together as they feel safe... in areas of sparse population,
planes could fly as low as 500 feet." In February 1984, a pilot
interviewed by the Poughkeepsie Journal said he and other pilots "test their skills flying in a V shape
using a rotating beacon and navigation lights. The formation might appear
motionless because it is so wide and can be seen from long distances."
Discover Magazine in 1984 reported that a group of pilots
practicing their formation skills, first in the day time, then when they became
more confident, at night, "became
tight formations of aircraft with as little as 6 inches between wingtips."
According to skeptical writer Brian Dunning, "there's no evidence that these pilots ever intended a UFO
hoax" but "when local newspapers
began printing stories about strange sightings and experiences, and television
stations ran tapes of the mysterious lights in the sky, the pilots were
incredulous, then amused. The group began calling themselves the Martians."
The pilots would turn off their exterior lights at the same time which would
make the aircraft appear to disappear from the sky. "They vary their formations, from crescents and circles to crosses
that looked from the ground like diamonds or V's, giving rise to reports about
different and sometimes startling UFO shapes."
UFOlogists
According to UFOlogist Peter Gersten, in the summer of 1984,
his organization Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) received hundreds of
reports of a large boomerang object hovering over trees with lights with a "slight buzz". Gersten had at
that time not interviewed the pilots who had claimed they were responsible. He
intended to hire a private investigator to look into the timing of reported
sightings possibly corresponding to the flights by the pilots. Gersten believes
that some of the eye-witness reports were explained by the flight of the pilots
flying in a V formation, but not all of the eye-witness reports.
Gersten stated "It
could be explained as extraterrestrial. We had someone try to photograph (the
object). But it has avoided being filmed" According to the manager of
CPI Photo Finish in Yorktown, "We're
seeing quite a few U.F.O. pictures. People come in and hand you the film and
say: 'Be careful with these. We ran outside with our camera because something
was flying over our house."
As of September 1984, Gersten's group was offering a $1,000
reward for information of the pilots flying the light aircraft out of the
Stormville airport. Hynek, the former scientific advisor to the Air Force's
Project Blue Book, who later in life favored the interdimensional hypothesis
explanation of UFOs, described the incident as "absolutely weird. There's no logical explanation for it."
Some witnesses reportedly refused to believe that planes flying in formation
were responsible for their sightings, and on August 28, 1984, UFOlogists
convened a conference in Brewster, New York to discuss the recent rash of UFO
sightings.
In 1987, Ballantine Books published Night Siege: The Hudson
Valley UFO sightings, by the late J. Allen Hynek, Phillip J. Imbrogo, and Bob
Pratt. Imbrogno reported having witnessed the Hudson Valley UFO for five minutes. Imbrogno noted similarities between the Hudson Valley
object and the recently declassified stealth bomber. In their book and
interviews, UFOlogists Hynek, Imbrogno, and Pratt publicized photographic
stills of videotape evidence they believed depicted the UFO.
In 1992, the sightings were the subject of an episode of
Unsolved Mysteries.
In 2017, Brian Dunning interviewed Revolt film director Joe
Miale about how his childhood memory of "triangular craft with colored
lights moving slowly over our houses" in the Hudson Valley cemented his
lifelong fascination with science fiction. Dunning speculated why despite these
explanations, the "Hudson Valley UFO phenomenon" was popularized and
books like Night Siege were written. According to Dunning, "These were not journalists or objective reporters. They were all
UFO authors who made their careers out of sensationalizing these little stories
they found by keeping an eye on the newspapers. None had any serious academic
credibility." And though the UFO investigators have acknowledged that
some of the sightings were pilots flying light aircraft, practicing formations with
lights that match the lighting on the aircraft, they continue to state that
besides this known explanation, a UFO was also likely in the area. "The UFO looked the same, behaved the
same, it flew in the same way and in the same place. Would that not be a
staggering coincidence? Isn't it more likely that our human perceptual errors confirmation bias selective memory and all the other cognitive
phenomena that shape our perceptions played some role here? Personally, I think
it is."
External links
- December
23, 1985 - Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filed by Robert Todd to the
General Counsel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Skeptoid - The Hudson Valley UFO
Mystery
1984 Hudson Valley UFO sightings. (2025, January 3). In
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Hudson_Valley_UFO_sightings
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