From Outer Space to You
Satellites? Or...WHAT?
The Sphere
This intriguing mystery seems entirely forgotten; I could find no discussion of it on any website or book. To the best of my knowledge, the only article about the Sphere appeared in the October, 1974 issue of the MUFON Journal; the author was Theodore Spickler, an associate professor in physics. Perhaps this post will keep the mystery alive in Fortean memory.
Alas, I don’t have an exact location for this event. I know only that the incident occurred in “southeastern Ohio” near Parkersburg, a West Virginia city just over the border.
Around 10:30 a.m. on September 7, 1974, one Keith Hammerman went hunting on land belonging to a farmer named Oliver Wagner. Hammerman heard “a loud sonic boom followed by a sharp crack, then a swishing noise.” About 50 feet ahead of him, smoke rose above the trees, spreading a noxious odor similar to sulfur, though not precisely like sulfur.
Hammerman rushed off to inform Wagner, who had heard the booms, as had several neighbors. A search party soon found the source of the smell: A sphere made of “bluish-gray ablated metal,” just short of one foot in diameter and weighing twenty pounds. A thick seam indicated that someone had welded two metal hemispheres together.
“No crater was made,” writes Spickler; “the sphere left a clear hard impression in the clay where it obviously struck at a great speed.”
Steam rose from the moist clay near the sphere, which had “two ‘latch’ type protrusions along the side opposite to one another.” Two other metal protrusions had been melted. “A ¼ inch hole extends into the hollow interior.”
For the next few days, whatever was inside the Sphere emitted a strange odor. According to Spickler, “The sphere rings with a clear sound when struck and exhibits no radioactivity.” Also: “The bluish-gray color is typical of steel that has undergone a heat treatment similar to atmospheric entry.”
A satellite? Spickler discounted the possibility. He presumed that a satellite would have been constructed of lighter materials.
That presumption may have been hasty. The object described in this article strongly resembles Sergei Korolov’s design for the original Sputnik satellite, a sphere with four antennae. Sputnik was composed on two hemispheres made of an aluminum-titanium-magnesium alloy, which were bolted together, housing a rather primitive radio. (The first American satellite, Explorer 1, was torpedo-shaped.)
Ollie Wagner and his wife Goldie brought their find to the attention of Helen White, a writer for the Parkersburg Sentinel (now the Parkersburg News and Sentinel). At present, I do not have access to the story she wrote.
That’s all I have so far. Internet research reveals that several Oliver Wagners lived in Ohio in 1974. I can’t determine which of these Wagners is the one we’re looking for, since the MUFON story does not tell us the man’s age. In all likelihood, the Sphere still exists...somewhere. If the thing really is a downed Sputnik, it would be quite the collector’s item.
Here is the original MUFON piece. Compare the cover photo to this photograph of a Sputnik.
The hole in the ice
January 10, 1977: On a punishingly frigid day, around noon, horse breeder Bill McCarthy of Ballard’s Ridge Road, East Wakefield, New Hampshire (near the Maine border), looked out on the frozen pond near his house. A round hole, about three feet in diameter, had been cut through 18 inches of ice.
The hole was at the center of a much larger 40-foot circle of slushy, partially melted ice. “Whatever it was must have put out a lot of heat,” McCarthy later told a reporter.
The partially melted ice remained firm enough to support his weight. Through the clear water, McCarthy could see a box of some sort in the pond’s bottom; his attempts to retrieve it with the equipment at hand only caused the box to sink further.
Bill Palmer, a friend who helped him with these efforts, became worried that it — whatever it was — might be radioactive, so he called the police. The local police chief got high Geiger counter readings, so he called Civil Defense.
State Civil Defense director Wesley Williams acquired a reading of three roentgens per hour, well above normal; two other instruments registered much lower numbers. Since the readings did not agree, Williams had the machine with the high number tested thoroughly: “We put it through the rigors of trying to make it foul up and it didn’t,” he said, adding those tests included subjecting it to zero temperatures.” (Biddeford-Saco Journal, January 15, 1977.)
Journalists and curious civilians swarmed the farm. Since there were no reports of meteors or losses from aircraft, the theory of a downed satellite naturally took hold in the minds of many. Ice did not re-form over the hole, even though extremely cold weather lingered for days.
When the ice finally melted, the mystery object was gone. Had someone scooped it up?
The New York Times of January 14, 1977 reported that National Guardsmen “sawed through the ice and dug up some mud from the bottom with a post hole digger.” Ten years later, the New Hampshire Sunday News (January 19, 1986) published a very thorough follow-up story which indicated that something more than mud was retrieved.
The box was not seen again by McCarthy until photographs taken by his wife that day were developed about a week later. The pictures show two men, one carrying a long-handled fish net and another a heavy object, partially concealed under his coat. The men, said McCarthy, were walking behind the house to a car.
These two men were not part of the team that took the soil sample. Unfortunately, this photo has never been reproduced.
The same “ten years after” news story claims that one of McCarthy’s German Shepherd dogs died, presumably after drinking the water. After the dog was autopsied, McCarthy learned that the animal had suffered internal burns, indicating the ingestion of radioactive material. Unfortunately, the vet did not put that conclusion in writing.
A report by John Stanton of the state’s Radiation Control Agency noted that “some satellites contain devices that derive power from nuclear fuel, similar to a miniature nuclear reactor.”
This is true: Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) have been used in space missions since 1961 – and some RTG components are indeed box-shaped. According to Wikipedia, the RTG unit in the Nimbus VI satellite — launched in 1975 — was damaged but remains in Earth orbit. An earlier Nimbus satellite was destroyed during launch, and the nuclear fuel landed in the Santa Barbara Channel; the fuel was recovered from a depth of 300 feet and re-used.
The details I’ve give so far come from mainstream publications like the New York Times and the Boston Herald-American (both January 14, 1977). A few Fortean authors have expanded the narrative in rather dubious ways. The oddest story — which I do not believe — holds that a second hole appeared fifty feet away from the first, and that a “trench” in the pond bottom indicated that the mystery box had somehow moved. (The pond is some 115 feet at its widest.)
The official story holds that the high Geiger counter readings were erroneous, that the box never existed, and that the mystery hole was created — somehow — by water currents.
The governor issued the usual “Nothing to see here” statement, and the press moved on.
Thirty-two years later, Bill McCarthy found another oddity on or near his new property, located a bit further down the road.
While exploring the woods (he likes to collect old bottles), McCarthy stumbled across a large “rock” unlike anything he’d ever seen. Mostly dark grey, but with a red stripe, this artifact seems to be made of melted plastic, with many jagged angles as well as smooth areas. It is also incredibly light for its size. McCarthy surmised that this “plastic” had arrived in a molten state, since leaves and other ground material had become impressed into it. A sharp knife could not scrape away the red part. (My source is an article – with photos of the artifact — published by Foster’s Daily Democrat on October 9, 2008.)
Satellite debris? Possibly. But what are the chances that the same obscure horse breeder in New Hampshire would encounter space junk twice in his lifetime?
Perhaps both finds were once part of the same device.
The original pond is visible from the road and via Google Earth. The vastness of our world makes it hard to envision how falling space debris could target this small place. If Fate is random, why does it have the aim of Hawkeye?
A final note
Yes, I agree: It seems very unlikely that a satellite would survive re-entry. However, it should be noted that many components of the doomed space shuttle Columbia were recovered, including a flight data file manual and a film canister. If you still maintain that Sputnik could not possible hit terra firma more-or-less intact, let me ask: How do you explain these findings?
I am all attention.