The Princeton, Indiana Saucer (1973)
In August 1973, near Highway 64 through the Wabash River bottoms, near Princeton, Gibson County, Indiana, on an evening in August 1973, around 9:00 p. This case file covers what witnesses reported, the official narrative, and a two-pass assessment with its evidence tier.
What did witnesses see at Highway 64 through the Wabash River bottoms?
On an evening in August 1973, around 9:00 p.m., a family of three was driving home to Princeton, Indiana after visiting relatives across the state line near Mt. Carmel, Illinois, about twelve miles to the west. A storm had blown up while they were out, so they left in a hurry. Their route ran east along State Road 64, which begins at the bridge over the Wabash River at Mt. Carmel and runs through the flat lowlands the witness called "the bottoms" into Gibson County, Indiana. The sky was overcast with thick cloud, there was light rain, and lightning was flashing.
The primary witness, driving with his family including his oldest boy, who was about fifteen, first noticed what he took to be "a couple of headlights" low in the eastern sky. As they drove on he realized the lights were "above the trees," not on the road. A lightning flash then lit up the whole shape, and what it revealed was, in his words, "a saucer."
He described a classic disc, but with an unusual top. Instead of the rounded dome people usually report, this one carried a structure he likened to a "conning tower," straight up and down "with a little rolled edge." Around that cupola were lights. At first he read them as clearance lights, one on each side, but as the object came clearer he counted four of them dotted around the tower. Hanging beneath the disc was the strangest feature: a "super-dark cone" that narrowed to a point, or apex, that reached down below the level of the treetops. The cone did not look solid to him; it seemed to widen out toward the bottom of the saucer and stay dark even when lightning lit everything else.
He put the craft at roughly 30 to 40 feet wide, hovering about 30 feet above the treeline, and somewhere around 500 to 600 feet away from the car. The object moved in from the east, then "kinda stopped and started down," settling onto a northwest to southeast track and descending very slowly. As the family got to within about 500 feet, it sank down into the woods. The whole encounter lasted around five minutes. The witness was specific about what did not happen: he heard no radio interference, and the car engine did not stall, "as I have read they did" in other cases. He was already familiar enough with UFO reports to know what the textbook effects were supposed to be, and he noted their absence.
What stuck with him most was how old the thing looked. He said it was "not streamlined" but "straight up and down, nothing ultra-modern." It struck him as "archaic, something out of Jules Verne, like a pickled metal," a burnished silver color rather than the polished aluminum of a modern aircraft. He kept coming back to that word, archaic, as if he had watched a machine from the wrong century descend into the Wabash woods.
What is the official explanation?
No government investigation exists. Project Blue Book had closed in December 1969, so no Air Force or federal file was ever opened. The only documentation is the civilian record by Francis L. Ridge through his NICAP-affiliated UFO Filter Center in the Indiana Tri-State area, who logged it, wrote the report, and had it illustrated. NICAP catalog code 7308XX / 2100 / C1 / 03 / DISCwCNT.
What did the witnesses think it was?
A family of three driving home to Princeton, Indiana from near Mt. Carmel, Illinois: the driver (primary witness, a self-described skeptic), his wife, and his oldest son, about fifteen years old.
Is the Princeton, Indiana Saucer (1973) real? The two-pass assessment
Unknown tier. The case is unresolved and stands entirely on the consistent testimony of one family, recorded by a serious long-serving investigator, with a single descriptive drawing. No official agency documented it (none existed after Blue Book closed in 1969), and no independent method-shown analysis has identified the object or shown a hoax. There is therefore no official narrative to verify it and no dispute to weigh, which places it in Unknown rather than Verified Unexplained or either disputed tier.
Sources
- www.nicap.org/reports/7308XXprinceton_report.htm
- www.nicap.org/7308XXprinceton_dir.htm
- www.nicap.org/chronos/1973fullrep.htm
- www.nicap.org/wave73.htm
- nicap.org/bios/detailed/Ridge_F_detailed%20_bio.htm
- www.nicap.org/images/prince.jpg
- wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/Indiana_State_Road_64
More cases from this region: UFO sightings in United States
