UFOs have enjoyed a long and often tumultuous relationship with Indiana over the years. In fact, UFOs have been reported over the skies of Indiana long before the so-called "modern era of UFOs" which began in 1947. The Hoosier state, like the rest of the country was caught up in sightings of the Great Airship that was supposedly making its way eastward from California starting in 1896. In 1897 reports started to trickle in from the northern counties with sightings in Hammond, Gary and South Bend. Soon, however, local newspapers all across the state started reporting Airship sightings in the skies above their communities. On the night of Friday, April 16, residents of Vincennes twice sighted a mysterious airship that passed slowly over the city.

According to the Vincennes Morning Commercial, the airship first appeared about nine o'clock, traveling along the extreme eastern portion of the horizon. A sphere of golden light was first seen in the vicinity of the Union Depot, from down in the city. Those near the ship claimed they could clearly see the dark lines of its car, although no passengers were observed.

Many reputable citizens witnessed the flight. From his home on Burnett's Heights, Sam Judah said he could plainly see the ship with its fluttering wings, its movements resembling a side wheeler steam-boat, sailing through the air with incredible velocity.

From his doorway, where he had gone to look at his thermometer, Col. Ewing saw the light, which he at first thought was a falling star, but as it moved so slowly, soon became convinced that it was the inevitable airship. Ewing watched it for about four minutes. Anton Simon noticed a ball of fire, moving in a northwesterly to southeasterly course, which he later realized was an airship.

Victor Schonfeld, somewhat of an expert observer, having made airships and balloons, a lifelong study, and having even made several ascensions in his time, testified that this was a genuine airship.

Among many others who saw the airship were Col. M.P. Ghee, Thomas Eastham, Judge DeWolf, Will Mason, Scott Emison, Jesse Foulks, all highly reputable witnesses.

The airship first passed rapidly overhead in a southwesterly direction. An hour and a half later, it was seen again, passing over the northern portion of the city, traveling in a northwesterly direction. The last time it seemed to pass directly over the fairgrounds (present-day Gregg Park) and traveled more slowly than in its first swift passage straight over the city.

It is thought that the navigator turned his flying machine around and started back, or that the ship landed near the city and started back. Some say voices could be heard in the airship, and one gentleman, who saw it from Burnett's Heights says he could see a man moving about in the ship and that he appeared to be adjusting the machinery.

In fact, the Vincennes encounter was only one of some 200 sightings made by thousands of people in 19 states, during the Great Airship flap of 1896-1897.

Eyewitnesses described the thing as self-luminous, surrounded by an aura of dim white light, the appearance resembled "a white shroud with fins." No clear-cut shape or outline could be observed. It was about 18 or 20 feet long, eight feet wide, and no head or tail was visible. It moved rapidly "like a fish in water" with the aid of "side fins." At times it flapped its fins violently, emitting a wheezing, plainting sound. It hovered about 300 feet above the town, but on several occasions it came within a hundred feet of the ground.

All the reports refer to this object as a living thing. A flaming red "eye" was noticeable. At times it "squirmed as if in agony." Once it swooped low over a group of witnesses who said that it radiated "a hot breath."

This strange creature made its appearance on two successive nights, September 4-5, 1891, first coming into view about midnight on both nights, and disappearing upward about 2:00 A.M.. On the first night witnesses included the Rev. G.W. Switzer, pastor of the local Methodist Church, and his wife, who watched the sky phantom for more than an hour. On the second night hundreds of residents watched the monster as it moved slowly over various parts of the business district for two hours. The next evening the entire town stayed up to see the strange visitor, but it failed to make a reappearance.

"You can call me anything you want, but I know in my heart and in my mind what I saw that evening, and it was some kind of spaceship," Massie said.

Massie, 85, was ten years old when he encountered the object. The retired high school math teacher and coach says he kept quiet about the incident until 1990 because his father told him never to breathe a word about what he saw because "people would talk." Massie's UFO sighting happened in June 1923 on the family farm in northern Wayne County (east-central Indiana, near Richmond).

"I opened the gate to let the horses into the pasture. I let them through, and as I was closing the gate I looked back down the field and there was an object with lights all around it," Massie said. "I kept walking closer to the object until I got about 50 feet away. I stood there and watched the five men who were on board."

Massie described the men as being about four feet tall with blond hair. "I got close enough that I could hear them talk," Massie said. "One guy sat in a chair and the others called him the commander. Four others made trips back and forth in the ship. I didn't know what was going on until the end."

Massie claims he heard one of the crew members tell his commander that "the repairs had been made."

"The machine was metallic and stood on three legs. The top was a dome with holes in it. The best way I could describe the top was it looked like melted glass," Massie said.

The encounter lasted only about five minutes, Massie said. "In a minute, it came to a hovering position. The tripod legs telescoped up into the belly of the thing, and it went straight up about 200 feet and whizzed off to the west like a bullet," he said. Startled by what he saw, Massie says he ran home and told his parents, Grover and Laura Massie, and his 8-year-old brother, Lyveere.

"Mom and Dad tried to convince me that I really hadn't seen anything, and was making up the whole thing," he said.

He says his dad announced he wanted no member of his family mentioning the incident to anyone because they might think Norman was "crazy in the head, or an idiot."

Massie broke his silence on the matter in 1990 when he told his son, Jerry, who was a colonel in the Air Force at the time:

When I got done telling him the whole story he told me there was nothing wrong with me, that the Air Force files are full of pictures of UFOs. He accepted my story as the truth.

Massie says he's convinced the object had to come from somewhere other than Earth. "It doesn't bother me one bit that people might think I'm a crazy old man. In my own mind and my own heart, it existed and I saw it with my own two eyes."

That same year, two college students in Greencastle spotted a strange revolving red object that passed quickly and silently overhead from the northeast to the southwest. The two young men describe the object as round and glowing like a "red hot piece of molten metal."

An early airline sighting involved the crew and passengers of a TWA DC-3 on the evening of April 4, 1950 over Goshen, Indiana. The DC-3, piloted by Capt. Robert Adickes and co-piloted by Capt. Robert F. Manning, was at about 2000 feet, headed for Chicago, when, at about 8:25 P.M., Manning spotted a glowing red object aft of the starboard wing, well to their rear.

It was similar in appearance to a rising blood red moon, and appeared to be closing with the airliner at a relatively slow rate of convergence. The co-pilot watched the UFOs approach for about two minutes, trying to determine what it might be. Then Manning attracted Adickes' attention to the object asking what he thought it was. He rang for the hostess, Gloria Henshaw, and pointed it out to her. At that time the object was at a relative bearing of about 100 degrees and slightly lower than the airliner.

"The object was seemingly holding its position relative to us, about one-half mile away," Manning reported. Capt. Adickes sent the stewardess back to alert the passengers, and then banked the DC-3 to starboard to try to close on the unknown object. "As we turned, the object seemed to veer away from us in a direction just west of north, toward the airport area of South Bend," Captain Adickes said. "It seemed to descend as it increased its velocity, and within a few minutes was lost to our sight."

In July, 1952, Captain Richard Case was flying an American Airlines Convair near Indianapolis when he became one of several person who sighted a UFO that startled the residents by making a low pass over the city. He commented that it seemed to be a controlled disc-shaped craft moving at some 1,000 miles per hour and he witnessed it dropping from approximately 15,000 to 5,000 feet before heading in over the city.

Mr. John Michael of Bedford wrote a letter to WTTV-4 detailing his UFO sighting on October 16, 1956:

I was aroused from sleep by a noise buzzing over my house. I went to the front door to look and as I stepped out on the darkened porch, I found myself directly under the beam of a white light from an object in front of the house, its nose was pointed directly at me as it approached. Missing the power lines and the house, it flew on south.

The object circled back and its searchlight was again being focused directly upon me, then it pulled sharply up again to miss the power lines and the house. It headed south and again began a sharply cut circle back. As it did, I could see the shape of it. The wings sat back at dead center and many lights were flickering off and on, from the wings, the tail and the front. There were at least four colors of lights, red, blue, yellow and the white of the searchlight.

Now it was headed back and as it stood on the east side of the house it again pointed the light and the nose of the ship at me. I expected it to land on the vacant lot in front, but suddenly it stopped as if powerful brakes had been applied. It then flew away to the east, making considerable noise from some sort of power plant. A person living near the airport had also seen it, but had taken it for a navy plane.

At least two control tower operators at Bunker Hill Air Force Base near Peru (now known as Grissom Air Base), and the pilot of a Mooney private airplane spotted a UFO hovering near the base on September 13, 1959. The UFO was described as pear-shaped and white colored with a definite metallic sheen. The UFO also had mist or smoke coming from underneath. It showed little movement during the over three hours in which it was seen both visually and on radar. A USAF T-33 jet trainer was sent up to try and intercept the UFO which then shot straight up and disappeared.

Numerous sightings of a UFO were reported in eastern Indiana and western Ohio on the night of October 10, 1973. The object was said to blink a red and blue revolving light, and hovered near the ground. The UFO was tracked for hours by Delaware County police officers. Military radar controllers operating in the tower at Baer Field, Ft. Wayne, confirmed that their radar sensors had tracked an object that could not be identified.

Airport communications personnel said they couldn't get the object to respond. More than 750 calls were received from law enforcement switchboards. Delaware County officers received calls from 15 different areas of the county. A light plane was dispatched, but failed to find the object.

One of the better reports that evening was in Martinsville where Morgan County Sheriff's Deputy Robert Williams said he saw a UFO take off from the ground.

"It looked like a clear, bright light," Morgan said, "and it looked like it took off from the ground toward the east and got so far off the ground and disappeared."