Sheffield Lake, OhioSeptember 1958

Early on the morning of September 21, 1958, a woman in Sheffield Lake, Ohio, woke to a bright light flooding her bedroom. When she looked out the window, she saw a flat, circular object about 20 feet across hovering a few feet above her front yard. The object moved slowly in a northerly direction, then made tight turns in the yard while giving off pink-gray smoke. It finally shot straight up and disappeared. The sighting lasted about five minutes. Her 10-year-old stepson, sleeping in another room, also saw a strange light and confirmed her account the next morning, though he had not known she was watching it too.

Two other witnesses in the nearby town of Lorain reported seeing unusual lights around the same time, and several neighbors noticed the bright light, though they did not see the object itself. Mrs. Fitzgerald said the object made a humming and whirring noise, like a jet engine warming up.

Air Force investigators arrived on October 3, 1958, and quickly found two likely explanations. A train with an oscillating headlight had passed near the house at the time of the sighting, traveling roughly 100 yards away on nearby tracks. At the same time, a Coast Guard cutter on Lake Erie had been using its spotlight to search for an overdue boat and may have directed the beam toward shore in the general direction of her home. The weather that night was misty and rainy with haze and smoke in the air from nearby factories. The investigators also noted that Mrs. Fitzgerald had been watching a horror movie, "Dracula's Daughter," before going to bed.

The Air Force concluded that Mrs. Fitzgerald and her stepson had experienced an illusion. The combination of the train's moving light and noise, the Coast Guard spotlight, the smoke and mist, and her emotional state after the movie had led her to misinterpret what she saw. The investigators noted that the same illusion can affect multiple witnesses if conditions are right, just as magicians can fool many people at once. Mrs. Fitzgerald objected strongly to this explanation and wrote angry letters to the Air Force and her congressman, but the Air Technical Intelligence Center stood by its conclusion.

The case file contains 62 pages as held by the National Archives.