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Case · C-111

Dexter and Hillsdale 1966: lights over the swamps and the “swamp gas” explanation

Dexter, Washtenaw County (point on the map), and Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan · United States · Mar 20, 1966 – Mar 21, 1966

In flight Mixed witness types

Disputed explanation

What happened
On the evening of March 20, 1966, near Dexter, a farmer and his son reported lights rising from a swamp; police officers responded and about fifty people said they had seen lights for hours. The following evening dozens of female students in a dormitory at Hillsdale College and the local civil defense director watched colored lights for hours over a nearby swampy area. On March 28, House Republican leader Gerald Ford, elected from Michigan, called for congressional hearings, judging the Air Force's explanation insufficient; an Armed Services Committee hearing followed and, in October, the assignment to the University of Colorado of the study later known as the Condon Report, which Ford presented as the result of his request.
Proposed explanation
On March 25, 1966, Hynek suggested swamp gas as a possible cause (methane and other gases said to ignite spontaneously); the explanation was mocked by the press, rejected by Representative Gerald Ford, and judged physically inadequate even by later skeptical analyses (Skeptoid), which do not propose another.
Official investigation
U.S. Air Force (Project Blue Book, with consultant J. Allen Hynek); House of Representatives (hearing of the Armed Services Committee, April 1966)
Words of the document
a more thorough explanation than has been given them by the Air Force to date

Official documents

  1. Ford Press Releases – UFO, 1966 (lettera di Gerald R. Ford del 28 marzo 1966 ai presidenti delle commissioni Forze armate e Scienza e astronautica, comunicati successivi) · Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (Ford Congressional Papers) · 1966

Sources

  1. Wikipedia – Michigan "swamp gas" UFO reports (other)
  2. Brian Dunning, Skeptoid #892, “The UFO That Wasn't Swamp Gas” (2023) (analysis, skeptical)
  3. WKAR, “UFO or swamp gas? MI's 'close encounter' 50 years later” (2016) (press)

On this site

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