Woburn, MassachusettsNovember 1962

On a November morning in 1962, a carpenter named Charles Kirk stood outside a building in Woburn, Massachusetts, and watched an unusual object hover in the bright daylight. He timed the sighting with his watch. The object stayed in view for nine minutes before vanishing while he watched.

Kirk described the object as golden orange in color, shaped like a streamlined egg cut in half lengthwise. It was roughly forty feet long, thirty feet wide, and fifteen feet tall. The bottom was flat, with a black band running around its lower edge. A projection hung down from underneath the object, and Kirk heard a clicking sound each time this protrusion extended and retracted. He estimated the object was about two thousand feet high and said it gave off a bright light, brighter than sunlight itself. The object made no sound other than the clicking. After it disappeared, Kirk felt sick.

The file notes that Kirk was the only person who reported seeing the object from the Woburn area that day. However, investigators noted something unusual: when defense officials checked the area, they found a slightly abnormal amount of background radiation. A Geiger counter later confirmed a slight increase in radiation that night. The report also mentions that investigators were checking on whether the object had been tracked on radar by a nearby center, though the case file does not indicate what they found.

The Air Force evaluated this sighting as unidentified. The full case file, consisting of nine pages as preserved by the National Archives, is reproduced below.