Project Blue Book Case File
AUBURN, ALABAMANovember 1952
Summary
On the evening of November 7, 1952, a man living at Graves Apartments in Auburn, Alabama, reported seeing a bright, circular object hanging stationary in the sky to the east of town. The witness said he had just returned home from a football game around 10:45 p.m. when he happened to look up and notice how hazy the sky was. That is when he spotted the object. He could not determine the object's size, color, or height. In a later written account, he described the object as appearing like a bright light, possibly a reflection from water or sunlight, though he admitted he could not identify what it actually was.
The witness completed a detailed questionnaire for the U.S. Air Force a month later, in December 1952. According to his account, the object remained stationary throughout the sighting and slowly appeared to move away and become smaller over roughly an hour. He noted seeing haze and broken clouds in the area, with visibility reduced to four miles by smoke. When asked about his certainty regarding the object's movement and size, the witness indicated he was not fully confident in his estimates. The weather at Auburn that evening included scattered clouds at twelve thousand feet and broken clouds at twenty-seven thousand feet.
The U.S. Air Force collected the witness's statement and technical questionnaire but noted that it had no other information beyond what the observer provided. The file records that the observer's occupation (a student at Alabama Polytechnic Institute), background, and credibility were unknown to the investigators. The Air Force ultimately evaluated this sighting as unidentified. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 17 pages.
Reported location
AUBURN, ALABAMA
Date of incident
November 1952
State / country
AL / US
Page count
17 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unidentified
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 16