N Of Langley AFB, Va., October 1959October 1959

On October 19, 1959, two teenage boys near Poquoson, Virginia, reported seeing a glowing, circular object about four feet in diameter while they were hunting in a remote marsh area north of Langley Air Force Base. The larger, metallic-looking object had a dark dome in its center and hovered low above the ground before descending closer to one of the witnesses.

Frightened by the sighting, the boy fired three shotgun rounds at the object. After the third shot, which he believed struck the object with a sound like metal scraping metal, the boy closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the object was gone. A second witness, standing about 150 yards away, heard the gunshots and saw the object spin like a top before disappearing straight up into the sky.

The Air Force did not immediately investigate the incident. The witnesses did not report it to Langley Air Force Base themselves. Instead, a civilian UFO researcher who heard about the sighting through a newspaper article contacted the base on October 23, four days later. He was told the decision to investigate would be made by other personnel. When he followed up, he encountered vague responses and was advised to submit his questions through official channels.

The researcher's persistence triggered a series of exchanges with Congress. Congressman Porter Hardy, Jr., requested information on behalf of constituents who believed the Air Force was being negligent. Internal Air Force letters eventually revealed that investigators had interviewed the two boys in May 1960, more than six months after the sighting. They concluded the incident was a hoax, noting inconsistencies in the witnesses' accounts and suggesting the boys had fabricated the story to avoid consequences for hunting on a restricted government bombing range.

The file contains 55 scanned pages held by the National Archives.