Saugerties, New YorkJuly 1956

On the night of July 13, 1956, a woman in Saugerties, New York saw two bright lights in the sky. One light was red and the other was white. The lights appeared stationary, about five miles away, and blinked on and off. She watched them for about 70 minutes before they vanished.

The woman reported seeing similar lights on the same night the previous week. A State Police officer in Kingston, New York also observed the same phenomenon from a ground observation post and said state police planned to investigate.

The Air Force sent investigators to look into the sightings. They determined that the lights were not actually airborne objects. Instead, they found that the woman had been seeing a rotating beacon light with course lights mounted on a tower located seven miles west of Saugerties. Under the hazy, cloudy conditions that night, with low cloud cover overhead, the tower lights appeared unusual and stationary when viewed from a distance. The lowering ceiling likely explained why the lights eventually disappeared from view.

Because the object turned out to be ground-based equipment rather than something flying through the air, the Air Force concluded it could not be classified as an unidentified flying object. The full case file, as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below across 10 pages of microfilm.