Easy Layup, Crash-Landing … December 9, 1965, The Allegheny Forest in Pennsylvania
When I was 12, I saw a UFO. My friend Jeff, his father, and I were killing time before dinner in a game of 2-on-1. I was heading for an easy layup when Jeff’s dad began shouting and pointing at the sky behind me.
“Look! A UFO! There!”
The oldest trick in the book – I look, he steals the ball. So I ignored him, got the layup, turned, and saw a green glowing object with a long multicolored tail drifting low and quiet across the evening sky. In stunned silence we watched it sail slowly over the forest and disappear. The official explanation was meteor but even a twelve year old knows meteors don’t drift across the sky. I had a nagging suspicion it was something else. But what? Jeff’s father called it a UFO and thousands of people in Western Pennsylvania agreed – especially down the road in Kecksburg where the damn thing crash-landed a few minutes later.
From Little Acorns Great Conspiracies Grow
Within an hour Men in Black leading a small army of soldiers entered the small community of Kecksburg, commandeered a house, issued radiation warnings (radiation?) to keep curiosity-seekers away, dug-up the UFO, put it on a flatbed truck, and left as quickly as they came. Some who caught a glimpse of it said the alien craft was acorn-shaped and others saw a dead three-fingered alien with lizard-like skin lying beside it. Who the hell knows what they saw? But people saw something on that flatbed truck. Jeff, his father, and I saw something in the sky. Yet when it was all over, there were no photos, no alien autopsies, and no explanations – only mass hysteria. Kecksburg would become the most famous UFO incident next to Roswell. Entire episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, and Ancient Aliens are devoted to it even today. People saw something. The official explanation was absurd. A conspiracy theory was born. And conspiracy theories never die.
A Time Traveler from Nazi Germany
The Kecksburg UFO Incident eventually got incorporated into the legend of “The Nazi Bell.” The Nazi Bell is said by conspiracy theorists to have been a spaceship engineered by Nazis in WWII. Using anti-gravity, it created wormholes, traveled through time, was shaped like an acorn, disappeared without a trace in 1945, then reappeared in the sky behind my house in 1965, minutes before crash-landing in Kecksburg. Every year there’s an Acorn Festival at the Firehall in Kecksburg where hundreds of conspiracy theorists and UFO investigators gather to share information at the large foam Acorn left behind by the set crew of Unsolved Mysteries. Today millions of people all over the world believe the Nazis had an anti-gravity-time-traveling bell go missing in 1945 and was recovered 20 years later in Pennsylvania by Men in Black. You couldn’t make it up for all the tea in China. Yet …
The Russians … ?
For decades, a local researcher named Owen Eichler has been toiling-away in obscurity seeking a rational explanation for the Kecksburg UFO Incident. Eichler was 13 and playing baseball in a nearby town when he saw the same thing I saw while playing basketball. For years his leading theory was Cosmos 96, a Russian spy satellite which was finally debunked in 2003. NASA determined that yes, a Russian satellite crashed “coincidentally” on the same day as Kecksburg, but due North – in Canada. In any event, it wasn’t acorn-shaped. Enter the GE Mark 2 re-entry vehicle. Today Eichler believes he’s finally solved the mystery. It turns out the Mark 2 carried U.S. spy satellites, was acorn-shaped, and was operational in 1965. It was the height of the Cold War, so retrieving a spy satellite explains the rapid response team that descended upon the town of Kecksburg. Case closed? Maybe, but NASA and the Air Force flatly refuse to confirm, deny, or answer questions about it. Why? Owen thinks he knows but conspiracy theorists are more convinced than ever it was the Nazi Bell, we’ve reversed-engineered it, and well, you know the rest.
No Cure
May 11, 2017 – Houston, Texas. My part in this story is true. The Nazi Bell? You decide. But I was playing 2-on-1 with Jeff and his dad when something flew over us on December 9th 1965. It crash-landed in Kecksburg. Men dressed in black suits actually rolled into town with soldiers, dug it up, and left. And today millions of people all over the world believe it was a time-traveling Nazi Bell from 1945 with an anti-gravity propulsion engine that makes wormholes. After half a century of investigations, alien autopsies, television shows, Acorn Festivals, and Owen Eichler’s discovery the Kecksburg UFO Incident is more shrouded in conspiracy than ever. There is no cure.
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Author Notes – Update January 7th 2018:
Recently, Owen Eichler saw this post and reached-out to me … we’ve talked at length on a few occasions and what a treat … at times he’ll go right into his interview protocol that help’s him gather accurate information about visual contacts with the object he’s identified as the GE Mark 2 … he’s persistent, nimble, thorough, and reminds me a little of Caroll’s Hatter who murdered time
A local reporter in Western Pennsylvania who covers Owen’s research has also contacted me … I warned him confirmation with NASA, the DoD, and MIBs requires an investment too large for a small publication … he admitted wryly that his publisher had already come to that conclusion … we went on to have a wonderful chat about Owen and that was that
For me, Owen Eichler is the real story here – a lone person devotes a lifetime pursuing the true story behind the Kecksburg UFO Incident … Owen told me what his latest research implies about the true purpose of the GE Mark 2 re-entry vehicle … I warned him that to go public may bring down the wrath of intel agencies in at least two countries so best to remain silent … after looking into Owen’s theory, I’ve concluded he is correct and am convinced more than ever we should remain silent … but Owen is on a mission … we shall see
Recounting my conversations with Owen to my father he let-out excitedly that he and my mother saw the object that evening while they were driving home from a visit with relatives … strangely, we hadn’t spoken about it until now … after all these years our description of the “Nazi Bell” and its flight path concurred … but why hadn’t we talked about it that night when they got home?! … why didn’t Jeff, his father, my parents, or I ever once talk about what we saw? … a mystery wrapped in an enigma
Jeff is the real name of my childhood friend … his father’s name was Jim … I have no idea where they are now … we lived in a tiny horseshoe-shaped community of 6 homes in the Allegheny Forest … the homes are long gone and the land today shows no signs that anyone lived there except for a faint indentation in the earth where our basketball court used to be … the court became our ice-skating rink every Winter when our dads laid a perimeter of forms, stretched vinyl across the court, and filled it with water … I’m pretty sure I grew-up in paradise but I have no evidence to prove it save for that indentation … it can actually be seen on Google Earth and for Owen Eichler, that was worth a thousand words
The following Spring, I turned 13 and by Summer we’d moved to Kentucky where I came of age on the banks of the Ohio River … I’ll never forget The Allegheny Forest and the rich experiences growing-up there … finding Owen after all these years triggered so many memories of my life in Paradiso, I can hardly keep-up
In the Sixties, adults could find a Russian behind every strange thing that happened – for kids, that kind of thing is weird and scary … it may be no accident a generation that marinated in Russia-phobia is acting-out the same bizarre drama today that we observed in our parents when we were kids … hopefully, our kids and grand-kids are paying no attention
There are just enough breadcrumbs in this post for you to figure out how to begin researching the truth behind the Kecksburg UFO Incident – I assure you, it’s astonishing … should you find it, I suggest you keep quiet
Sources:
1. My childhood experience in The Allegheny Forest in Western Pennsylvania
2. Unsolved Mysteries – The Kecksburg UFO Incident
3. Ancient Aliens – The Kecksburg UFO (multiple episodes)
4. YouTube
5. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Photos:
1. In August 2016, I returned to The Allegheny Forest, found the exact location my childhood home once stood and shot this photo in the direction we saw the The Nazi Bell drifting silently over the forest on its way to Kecksburg … my sisters were with me and can be seen in the photo looking for their bedrooms … the giant tree on the left is just outside my bedroom window – the first thing I did every morning was peak through the blinds to make sure I was still in Paradiso
2. The giant foam acorn was created by the producers of Unsolved Mysteries who left it behind where it sits to this day outside the Fire Department Hall in Kecksburg, PA
3. The photo of the GE Mark 2 re-entry vehicle was dug-up by Owen Eichler – it was on a display at a trade show for buyers from the Department of Defense
Steel Wheels 