A Fireball in Michigan Skies in 1965: What Really Happened?

MICHIGAN—It all started with the mysterious object the US military shot down over Lake Huron.

The pilot who took it down said it appeared octagonal in shape, and about the size of a four-wheeler. And although the US Coast Guard spent 60 hours conducting 23 different searches over 4,000 square miles—aided by the Canadian Cost Guard and the Canadian Royal Mounted Police—the object could not be recovered from Lake Huron.

We’re pretty sure this and the other unidentified flying objects that have floated over the country in recent weeks weren’t sent by aliens, but if you’re skeptical, you’re not alone. A recent survey found that Michigan ranks in the top 10 states in the nation for UFO sightings.

When we at The ‘Gander started digging into the Lake Huron object, we learned that Michigan has one of the most curious UFO cases in US history—so mysterious that a future president asked the federal government to take a deeper look. How could we not go down this rabbit hole?

That’s why, every other week, we’re bringing you “Extraterrestrial Tuesdays: UFO Sightings in Michigan.” So far, we’ve covered the Kinross incident and the infamous “swamp gas” sightings.

Never forget, ‘Ganders: The truth is out there.

The Fireball in the Sky in 1965

Detroit—Dec. 9, 1965

Peering up on a brisk December afternoon in 1965, Detroiters saw sparks raining down like fireworks. A sonic boom clapped overhead, and a fiery object blazed a trail across the sky. 

Afterwards, numerous photographs and anecdotal reports were filed documenting the incident. Residents said the object had an acorn shape, and some claimed to have seen it land in nearby hills. Scientists began tracing the path of what they believed must have been a meteorite  to Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. After a few months, however, newspaper headlines declared that “searchers fail to find object.” 

Fast forward to 2005, when—under pressure from a reporter—NASA announced that investigators had indeed found metallic remnants believed to be from the crash. However, two boxes worth of records on the incident had gone missing in the 1980s.

The public began to suspect that this wasn’t an alien encounter but a government cover-up for a Soviet satellite that had burned up and fallen from orbit several hours before the meteor was spotted in Michigan’s skies.

But further research from Leslie Kean, the Sci-Fi Channel reporter who filed the FOIA lawsuit, and James Oberg, a leading science writer, determined that the Kecksburg UFO likely wasn’t a cover up—it was more likely just a coincidence. The blaze that Michiganders saw plummeting to earth was probably, in fact, simply a meteor—though it may not have landed near Kecksburg. 

“It should be noted that estimating the impact point of fireballs from eyewitness accounts is notoriously inaccurate,” the NASA file reads.