The Presque Isle UFO Incident
By Cole Herrold
There are some cases that are clear
classics. These encounters are often retold and retold, and for me personally,
such encounters, while interesting, are often told so much that they become a
rather old hat. This is not to say that such encounters are boring or that
there isn't further information on the accounts; the Ape Canyon Incident, for
example, is one that while there is tons of potential new information on that
case, no one seems to cover it and so the same story is told and retold. The
problem with this is that for those who are incredibly interested in Fortean
phenomena, these cases tend to not get further looked into and instead are left
with the already lengthy work that was done. I run into this issue rather
frequently hence why most of my articles are on cryptids, aliens, or ghosts
that seemingly were only encountered a few times and only appear in
antediluvian archives or forgotten books. When I initially wrote about the
Uniontown UFO-Bigfoot Incident, I pulled some of my resources that involve
similar encounters; among them was perhaps the earliest encounter from
Pennsylvania of a seemingly extraterrestrial sasquatch.
The case is rather famous and known as the
Presque Isle Incident. Initially, I was reluctant to write about it as the
encounter has been written about rather extensively but being incredibly
intrigued by such encounters, I dug a little deeper, and after searching
through old newspaper accounts, various news videos, and some of the various
books on the subject I've come across more information revolving around the
case that has not been currently put into an official up to date document.
The incident began on the most unassuming
of days on Sunday, July 31, 1966. This encounter began when 18-year-old Douglas
Tibbets, 16-year-old Betty Jean Klem, 22-year-old Anita Haifley, 26-year-old
Gerald La Belle, 2-year-old Sandra Haifley, and 6-month-old Sara Haifley were
out spending the day on picturesque Beach 6 of Presque Isle. The group had
traveled to the beach from their homes in Jamestown, New York. They had spent
the day eating a picnic on the sand and spending an hour or two swimming and
might I add rather hazardously in the waters of Lake Erie (I add the
hazardously because the lake is reportedly home to an aquatic cryptid that has on
several occasions taken a bite out of swimmers, I hope to discuss it on a later
date). As the group was getting ready to leave, they all barreled into the car
and noticed that as Doug Tibbetts started the engine and applied gas to the
accelerator that the car was simply spinning on the sand, and they were unable
to get traction. The group then proceeded to get out and try to push the car
off the coarse terrain, but again they were still unable to get their vehicle
moving. It was during that time that they had decided to send Gerald La Belle,
the oldest of the group, to go and find help. Gerald was able to hitch a ride
with another group of beachgoers and made his way to Erie to search for a tow
truck or some other help.
It was starting to get dark out and was
about 9:30-10:00 pm when patrolmen Robert Loeb Jr. and Ralph E. Clark came to
the area where the group was stranded. Seeing the car, they came close and
asked the group if they required some assistance; the group told the officers
about how La Belle had left to get some help in town and that the officers
needed not to worry themselves about their current plight. The officers,
however, told them that if La Belle did not come back in around 40 minutes,
they would return to come and check to see if they had become free from the
sand trap.
The group, as they stared completely bored
out of their mind, began to stare upward at the stars. As they gazed into the
dark semi twinkling abyss, they saw a bright light that seemingly shot out of
the sky. The object, which at first they thought was a star, they noticed,
however, that it was moving erratically as it would start and stop moving
incredibly fast, occasionally dimming. The light was octagonal in shape with a
hollow center and appeared to be a glowing purple and blue. The object came
from the north, and as it reached a certain section, it seemed to hover in the
sky. The object, as it came closer,
seemed to change shape as it began to slowly descend down to the ground; the
object slowly landed onto Beach 7, about some 300 yards from their car. When
the object landed, they noticed that the object was mushroom-like in shape. It
was an oval structure with three lights on the back atop a narrow base. The
object emitted a beam of light that moved in a straight line across the sand. The
object seemed to emit a sound like the noise of a telephone receiver but
countless times louder. The sound was so loud that it vibrated their car. As
the object did this, it seemingly unleashed several rays of light that
illuminated the surrounding woods and gave them a clear look at the object. Mrs.
Klem would describe it further ‘it lit up the whole woods in the path. It
wasn’t like a searchlight. There was light along the ground along the whole
path”.
The officers returned to the area at about
10:30pm, and they noticed that La Belle had not yet returned. As they
approached the car, the group was talking so fast and panic-stricken that the
officers could barely decipher what the group was saying. Eventually, the group
was able to calm themselves, and Douglas Tibbetts would utter to the officers,
"There's something weird going on here." He would go and tell the
officers that something had landed near Beach Area 7 and that the group was
hearing several strange and peculiar sounds coming from that area. Tibbetts
would add that "…you arrived the lights went out" to the officers as
if the object was aware of their presence. The officers looked over at the area
and were starting to walk over to the area. Tibbetts feeling the safety of being
surrounded by armed individuals, decided to aid them in pointing them in the
direction where they saw the anomalous object land. The officers and Tibbetts
were heading towards where the craft seemed to land; they only made it a little
distance when they heard the horn sound from the car.
The officers and Tibbetts ran back to the
vehicle with such a sense of importance that one of the officers lost his
service pistol in the sand and chose not to take the few moments to recover it
but continued on his path to aid the women and children in the car. Where the
remainder of the group was completely freaking out. Betty Klem was in the
driver's seat, and when she saw the officers and Tibbetts, she began to run
down the beach in a state of hysterics. She was pursued by the officers and
eventually calmed by Officer Clark and initially was unable to tell what
happened. Once they returned to the vehicle, the officers and Tibbetts noticed
that Mrs. Haifley was in a total state of shock and unable to speak of what had
occurred. While Haifley was unable to speak, Klem began telling them what
happened while they were away. A little after the officers and Tibbetts entered
the woods, a figure came from the exact entrance. Thinking it may have been
Tibbetts or one of the officers, they weren't too concerned, but as they called
to the figure, they soon realized that it was not human. The group stared at
the creature and saw as it approached that the entity was some 6ft -7ft tall
and had a strong resemblance to a gorilla, yet further specific features were
undefined aside from its long protruding fangs. The creature then began to
circle the car first from a distance and then much closer. When the creature
was right next to the car, it began to reach out with razor-tipped claws and
scratch the side of the car, and hit the roof of the vehicle, which left some
dents. In the moment of pure terror, all the girls and children could seemingly
do was to scream and honk the horn. The creature seemed to react negatively to
the sound and, upon hearing it, returned back into the woods. Then right before
the men left the woods, the girls saw the craft rise up and speed off into the
north.
The officers feeling that this was getting
out of hand, began to take the group to the nearest police barracks, where they
retold the whole account. They then sent out a party to search the area, and
the entire area was filled with officers with every kind of caliber weapon you
could imagine, and the beach was littered with the red flashing lights of
police cars. It was around midnight when George La Belle returned to the
location, and he was in total awe at what he was now seeing. The car was still
there, trapped in the sand. All he could think seeing this spectacle was,
"my god, what is it, a war going on here." The officers searched the
area and focused primarily on the area of the car. They took pictures of the
scratches, which every member of the group claimed was not there before the
incident. Realizing they weren't going to get far investigating at night, they
returned to the barracks and decided to return to the scene in the morning.
At the police barrack, the group was still
kept, and Betty Klem's eyes were exceptionally red, which the officers
attributed to her crying; however, researchers, later on, would associate with
radiation. Chief Dan Dascanio would do the official interview and felt that the
witnesses were being truthful and considered the matter no joke. That morning
at about 7:00, they let the group return to the beach with them to retrieve
their car and belongings, and the group then spent the remainder of their time
being involved in the various investigations that followed. The following
morning the officers began to investigate the beach, and Officers Paul Wilson
and Robert Canfield found several triangular shapes, each 11 ft apart from each
other, and skid marks in the area where the object landed about 350-400 yards
away from the car. Among them were two diamond-shaped imprints about 18"
wide and 6-8" deep, each 10-12ft apart. Also, there was a series of tracks
that seemingly were found that led from the site of where the craft landed to
about 12ft from where the car was parked. The tracks were conical and similar
to a bear's or a person's and about 8" wide, 5-7" deep, and 5-8ft
apart. However, it is important to note that Officer Wilson, one of the
policemen who found the wave, did not feel that the tracks were from a creature
but appeared to be made by some kind of heavy object or objects. Photographs
were taken of the triangular patterns on the ground and made wide newspaper
circulation. Major William S. Hall of Youngstown came to the location on Beach
6 during this time and took plaster casts of the impressions in the sand.
As a follow-up, they proceeded to check to
see if others might have seen a similar object in the sky in which they found
several people who starting at 8pm and ending at midnight, reported seeing a
bizarre craft in the sky. The witnesses were Stephanie Lupo, Helene Roche, Alain
Orcel, Charoly Mango, Sue Karle, Linda Henderson, Janice Dickey, Jane Moran. Reports
of these UFO sightings would be covered in the Erie Daily Times and the Erie
Morning News. Steve Lupe, another witness who was around during that time,
would also claim to of seen a craft on Beach 2 when he and several of his
friends and three other individuals saw a craft hovering over Lake Erie at
about 8:30 pm. French exchange students Helene Roche and Alain Orcel, who lived
at 412 Frontier Drive about a mile away from the beaches of Presque Isle, saw a
lighted silvery object flying low that evening. Stephanie Mango of 4704
Homeland avenue also saw a similar craft claiming that the object was round and
an undistinguishable color that flew silently at treetop level. She watched as
the object moved toward the beach and then changed course towards the Erie's
bay area, where it disappeared from sight. Sue Karie, Linda Henderson, and
Janice Dickey were sleeping out in the yard of Karie's home at 1012 Shenley
Drive around 11:00pm when they spotted a silvery object which they first
thought was a star flying from South to North. They noticed that the object was
seemingly fading in and out but was noticeably round and saucer-shaped. Ms.
Karie reported that she heard a whistling sound and, as she looked up, saw an
object moving north as high as the Boston Store (about 138ft). It was very low,
and all the witnesses ran and got into their station wagon and proceeded to lock
the doors. They watched the object from the safety of the car for only a minute
before it ultimately disappeared. Another similar UFO sighting featured two
girls, one named Cheryl Coffi, who lived in the lighthouse at Presque Isle
State Park, claimed to of had a sighting in the area some three months prior to
the sighting but did state that it probably had nothing to do with the incident
near Beach 6.
Chief Dan Dascanio would then get ahold of
the air force due to the closeness of Wright-Patterson Airforce to determine if
some craft was potentially out that way that might have been misidentified.
There was a confirmed none, but this led to a follow-up investigation on the
Tuesday of that week within a matter of hours by five members of the National
Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena, better known as Project Blue Book.
The researchers named Richard Hobbs, Joseph McGuire, James Reed, Jeffery Gow,
and James Sippell did a precursory check of the area for radiation levels which
they would state was safe on the August 5, 1966 edition of the Erie Morning
News and took a statement from Ms. Klem. Project Blue Book would later
classify the Presque Isle case as one of the 'unexplained' cases in their
files. After their investigation, La Belle would return to the location and
discovered something incredibly odd. The tree where the creature appeared was
completely gone, as if the tree was never there from the beginning. It was not
laying on the ground or broken, nor was there a stump or roots. In an interview,
La Belle would say that he felt that "The air force found things they didn’t
want us to know. Betty didn’t even want to talk about it and Doug passed away
about 3 years after this happened and then Anita just dropped out of sight…I
don’t think they’re from this earth. They have to be from Outer Space, and they
sure are smarter than us because we’ve never caught one”.
UFO investigators and newsmen hearing
about all that would go on, began coming to the area to investigate and talk
with the officers. Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz would discuss at length the
encounter with Chief Dan Dascanio focusing primarily on Betty's sighting and
said, "I’m convinced that the young people saw something. The girl was a
credible person. Of the two individuals she was the most specific about what
she saw- she made no attempts to fill in her story when she wasn’t for sure.
She was one scared girl when I first saw her. Her hands were shaking, her face
was trembling, her speech was more inarticulate, and she had difficulty
remaining her composure. Her eyes were red, and she kept shaking her head from
side to side”. A year later, the findings of the case were investigated by Dr.
Berthold E. Schwarz, and his findings were reported in the October 1968 Medical
Times. Schwarz concluded that Betty was being truthful and that the
incident was not due to any illness or delusion.
During that time, two police officers
reported that they saw a UFO in the area some two hours before the sun rose on
August 3, 1966. The officer who initially saw the UFO was Lawrence Park
patrolmen William Rutledge who spotted the craft at 4:45 am, and around the
same time, Wesleyville patrolman Donald Peck also saw the object. There were a
scant amount of sightings in the area that were reported in the Erie Morning
Times the next day. After the police and the air force finished their investigations,
the beach became a major hotspot for locals and those wishing to catch sight of
something unknown. The entire Presque Isle was filled for countless months by
those who came armed with cameras, telescopes, picnic baskets, binoculars, all
aimed at the heavens in an almost Close Encounters of the Third Kind-like
scene. Yet Beach 6 was one of the most
heavily visited locations on the entire Isle. However, during that entire time after
the last few sightings at the beginning of the week, no further encounters or
sightings were reported. The town still remembers this encounter, and
occasionally material revolving around the case will appear in the local media.
Some years later, the case did return to
the media through Brian Sheridan, a local ABC news reporter who did a
news story on the sighting in 2005. In it, he interviewed Officer Ralph Clark,
who would describe the events of the night further based on the interview with
Betty Klem. He would add that the craft when it first appeared was very similar
to a basketball with red, yellow, and orange lights and a white beam that came
out onto the beach as if the craft was looking for something. He also would add
that during the initial investigation, they found strange claw-like
indentations that led to the water that they associated with a tripod-type
object and, upon analyzing the area, came up with nothing. They also found a
bizarre liquid that appeared in the sand that they could not identify, but that
was safe from radiation.
After his initial report, Sheridan
received a call from local truck driver Mr. Kim Faulkner who, upon seeing the
news broadcast, felt that he needed to come forward and claim that he was
behind the encounter that occurred that night. Mr. Faulkner was an 11-year-old
boy at the time claimed that he purchased two 9ft tall hot air balloons made of
first-grade tissue paper that had to be glued together and were heated with pie
tins from the back of Boy’s Life magazine for $3.50 that he managed to
put together at his home. He clamored onto the roof of his house with his
modified hot air contraption. The two balloons which were glued together were
red and white striped and had cleaner bags in the center of the creation that
gave the appearance of windows. As he let the balloon fly, he soon realized
that it was moving much faster and further than he anticipated and decided to
chase the balloon on his bike. He followed the balloon all the way to 15th
and Pittsburgh Ave before he ultimately gave up as he was unable to come close
to the balloon. Seeing he would not be able to recover it on foot or bike, he
returned home and attempted to get his dad to drive him to go recover his
balloon. His father, however, would have none of it as the balloon he said went
way too high and fearing that since they were so close to an airport, there
might be legal ramifications if it interacted with air traffic to this boyish
whimsy. So, his father sagely told him don't say anything, and he forgot about
it, but upon seeing the news broadcast, he felt he had to clear the air about
the sighting. He would say, "I believe it landed or close to it, it
reheated itself then it regained its height it only went out so far and then it
descended into the water and that s why there was no trace it was first grade
tissue paper and all they would find is maybe a few pie plates." However,
when asked about the evidence found at the scene and the creature seen at the
site, he said he had no part of that, only the UFO.
Sometime later, paranormal researcher and
holy man Pastor Robin Swope, the Paranormal Pastor of Erie, felt that something
was wrong with the statement laid out by Faulkner and proceeded to do some
digging. He contacted Sheridan and asked him whether he felt Faulkner had
attempted to gain some notoriety by claiming he was a hoaxster. Sheridan
replied that he verified the story with Faulkner’s brother, found the Boy’s
Life advertisement for the balloon, and even said that Faulkner did not
even want to be on the news, did not brag, and he was the only person after
they aired the original story that came forward claiming to of caused the
sighting. He seemed to be a credible person. While Sheridan felt that Faulkner
was telling the truth, there was something about his claim that seemed off.
Swope, who is a lifelong resident of Erie, knows that typically during that
time, the winds tend to go in a southwest direction, but the balloon would have
to of gone in a northwestern direction of three miles to of landed at Presque
Isle. Sure, enough upon doing some research into the weather patterns and
contacting local meteorologists of the region, he found that the wind indeed
was going a southwestern direction on the night that Faulkner allegedly freed
the balloon and that the balloon would have been going in a totally different
direction. So unless there was some strange weather pattern that night, there
is no way the balloon was the object seen by the stranded couple, and of
course, none of this explains the physical evidence or creature seen at the
site.
Variations of the account do exist, and
some are clearly accidental mistakes, such as Loren Coleman, who dates the
encounter in his book Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America as July
31, 1977. The show Monsters and Mysteries
in America featured an episode revolving around the case, and while not as
different as Coleman's date places the incident on July 30, 1966, a day before
the actual event. However, other variations occur mostly in regard to the
depiction of the creature seen and its behavior at the site. The August 6th
edition of the Pittsburgh Press, for example, describes the creature
seemingly as a floating entity. They described the entity as a
"formless" creature about 6ft tall with a head and shoulders but no legs
and that the entity was about 5ft from Betty Jean Klem. This variation is
interesting as the eyewitness sketch that was done seems very similar to this
description as it seems to only show a creature's upper torso and arms and a
straight line where the creature's waist should be. If this is the case, then I
would venture that it's safe to say that the encounter is not that of a
traditional Sasquatch variety ET and something entirely different. Coleman
would also describe the creature in a different way; he would describe the
creature as both neckless and armless that moved sluggishly in the underbrush.
Another frequent variation involves the
kind of reported evidence found at the site. There were several burn marks in
the ground in the shape of a triangle as that appears in every version of the
account, as well as the fact that there were several photographs showing the
anomaly. However, the tracks seemingly from the creature were something that is
debatable. Some accounts state that there were several footprints from the
woods to the car, whereas other accounts do not mention the tracks at all, or
more frequently, there was simply a single track found. Some of the accounts
involving multiple sets of footprints are occasionally described as starting
and stopping in an odd pattern as if the creature seemingly disappeared in
mid-stride.
Outside of the infamous Balloon hoax as
previously described, there was also an accusation that went out against La
Belle that he, in fact, created the UFO by using a flashlight and playing
tricks on the people in the car as a kind of practical joke, but after
analyzing all the evidence there’s nothing to confirm this and as La Belle is
the only surviving member of that night willing to talk about the event he
after some 55 years since the encounter is the only person keeping the story
alive aside from researchers. However, even with all this information, we are
nowhere near coming to a discernible answer.
In the annals of Pennsylvania history,
encounters with Bigfoot-like creatures and UFOs are rather common. I recently
covered the Uniontown UFO-Bigfoot case from 1973, which is perhaps the most
bizarre case of this type. A similar case occurred near Ohiopyle in 1974 and
featured several bigfoots that, when shot at, seemingly disappeared as a bright
Christmas ball style UFO flew through the sky. These cases are perhaps some of the
most interesting when it comes to the phenomenon, for there are many ways to
look at it there's for example, the idea that these creatures could be the pets
of some extraterrestrial species or that they are the intelligent drivers of
such objects, there's also the possibility that they are a completely unrelated
phenomenon that just happened to of been seen at the same time. It is important
to note that all of these cases are surprisingly different, especially this
one. For if any of the variations of the depiction of the creature are the
actual description, then that means that the creature seen on Presque Isle does
not fit into the Sasquatch category at all and is some bizarre entity. This is
also the most technological UFO of the Pennsylvania cases as most seem to be
bright lights or something more ethereal. The shape of the UFO is also
interesting as it bears a strong resemblance to the Space Penguins of Tuscumbia
case, which too was described as being a mushroom-shaped craft, albeit an
incredibly small one. Even with all of this, however, whatever happened that
night, I'm sure we'll never truly know and thus ends one of the weirdest cases
in Pennsylvania.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Hominid or
Extraterrestrial Hominid
Location: Beach 6, Presque Island, Lake
Erie, Erie, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Sighted: July 31, 1966
Works Cited:
Alien Meetings By Brad Steiger
Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in
America By Loren Coleman
The Bigfoot Files By Peter Guttilla
Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures
From Other Worlds By Brad Steiger and Sherry Steiger
Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and
Beasts From the Darkside By Brad Steiger
Lyon, Debbie “UFO Sightings at Presque
Isle State Park, July 31, 1966”. Old Time Erie. July 2, 2012. https://oldtimeerie.blogspot.com/2012/07/ufo-sightings-at-presque-isle-state.html.
Accessed December 4, 2021.
Swope, Robin "The Paranormal Pastor: The UFO landing on
Presque Isle." The Paranormal Pastor. July 13, 2008. https://theparanormalpastor.blogspot.com/2008/06/ufo-landing-on-presque-isle.html.
Accessed December 4, 2021.
Erie Daily Times. August 01, 1966.
Erie Daily Times. August 03, 1966.
Erie Daily Times. August 06, 1966.
Erie Morning News. August 01, 1966.
Erie Morning News. August 02, 1966.
Erie Morning News. August 03, 1966.
Erie Morning News. August 05, 1966.
Erie Morning News. August 12, 1966.
The Pittsburgh Press August 06, 1966
UFO at Presque Isle. YouTube. April 11,
2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7-v10TG5Q.
UFO at Presque Isle Part 2-Solved!.
YouTube. Apr 11, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjmQgDtDfZk.
Monsters and Mysteries in America Season
2, Episode 12 "Alien Bigfoot, Cajun Werewolf, Lake Pepin Monster."
Destination America. March 14, 2014.
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