1928 anomalous events archive: Yakima Washington late April CE-III with olive drab riveted hexagonal craft and uniformed occupant looking back at driver (Vallée Confrontations), Bolton Lancashire November CE-III with three rubber-suited dome-helmeted tank-backed entities advancing toward boy witness Henry Thomson (Norman Oliver Quest UFO Magazine), Milton North Dakota November round disc emitting ground-illuminating rays startling cattle (NICAP/Hall 1964), Leicester England Anstey Lane CE-III (HUMCAT), and Orebro Sweden four-witness NL (UFO Information Sweden). Four CE-III/CE-IV events in one year.
1928: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1928 produces the decade’s most structurally detailed CE-III craft observation in late April near Yakima, Washington, where driver Harry Dillon crested a slight rise on an unpaved country road at 4 PM and found a metallic hexagonal object with a dome descending into view. What he could see was specific enough to fill a technical report: the object was olive drab, hexagonal rather than disc or oval, with visible rivets along a vertical section and a rectangular two-by-three-foot window set in a metallic frame. Through that window he could see the upper torso of a man in a dark blue uniform with a dark complexion and entirely human-like features, looking intently toward the witness’s car. The object then rotated, crossed the road, and departed at extreme speed. Sourced through Vallée’s Confrontations, this is the pre-1947 archive’s clearest case of a specific structural craft description with a visible uniformed occupant looking back at the witness — the occupied hexagonal with rivet seams that no cultural source in 1928 rural Washington would have provided a template for. The November 1928 Bolton, Lancashire entity encounter adds the year’s most specific entity description: young Henry Thomson, running through a dark alley, encountered three strange figures peering into a lighted window — pale bulb-shaped heads, wide black eyepieces with a ribbed silver divider, inflatable rubber suits, transparent dome helmets, tubes running to back-tanks — who turned toward him and began to advance before he fled. Sourced through Norman Oliver in Quest UFO Magazine, the Bolton case is one of the most precisely described pre-modern entity encounters in the British record.
The year’s remaining cases fill out a geographic range that spans Canada, the United States Pacific Northwest, New York, England, Sweden, Oklahoma, South Africa, and Wisconsin. The November 1928 Milton, North Dakota case — a round inverted-soup-plate UFO speeding overhead, emitting illuminating rays that frightened cattle, sourced through NICAP/Hall — is one of the strongest contemporaneous press-adjacent NL cases of the late 1920s. The mid-1928 Monsey, New York abduction (HUMCAT sourced) and the mid-1928 Leicester, Anstey Lane CE-III (HUMCAT sourced) add CE-IV and CE-III dimensions respectively. The Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Velma Thayer contactee account — published in a tabloid twenty-seven years after the alleged 1928 event, involving a ten-day landed saucer with blond four-foot-six beings from Saturn named Ramu — carries the same credibility profile as the Tehachapi and other tabloid-sourced contactee cases and should be flagged accordingly. Taken together 1928 is the most entity-rich year in the 1920–1929 series, with four separate CE-III or CE-IV events in a single calendar year.
Date: 1928
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Time: Day
Summary: A daytime disc was reported. DD classification.
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980 ISBN:0-313-21337-2 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: late April 1928
Location : Near Yakima. Washington
Time: 1600
Summary: Harry Dillon was driving along an unpaved country road when as he reached the top of a slight rise he saw an object slowly coming into the view. The object was described as resembling a metallic hexagon with a dome on top, olive drab in color. The witness could see rivets along a vertical section and a two by three foot window set in a metallic frame. In the window he could see the upper torso of a man dressed in a dark blue uniform. The man had a dark complexion and was totally human-like. He looked intently in the direction of the witness’s car, and then the object rotated, flew across the road, and shot away at terrific speed. CE-III classification. Named witness, specific structural and occupant details, pre-contamination morphology (hexagonal with rivets).
Source: Jacques Vallee illustrates another similar case in his book “Confrontations, a scientist’s search for alien contact” | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: July 1928
Location: Monsey, New York
Time: 12:00
Summary: Abduction
Source: Webb, David HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: Mid 1928
Location: Leicester, Anstey Lane, UK
Time: Daytime
Summary: Close encounter with a an unidentified craft and its occupants. One object was observed by one witness in a field (Berger).
Source: Webb, David HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: Mid 1928
Location: Orebro, Sweden
Time: 22:00
Summary: Unidentified objects were sighted, that had an unusual appearance or performance. Two objects were observed by four male witnesses, typical age 15 (Andersson).
Source: UFO Information Sweden
Date: August 1928
Location: Chandler, Oklahoma
Time: Unknown
Summary: An unidentified object moving in a straight trajectory across the sky was observed by a male witness (Stern).
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980 ISBN:0-313-21337-2 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: October 1928
Location: Zoutpansberg, South Africa
Time: 02:30
Summary: Unusual objects were sighted, that had unconventional appearance and performance. Two objects were observed.
Source: BSRA (BORDERLAND SCIENCES RESEARCH ASSOCIATES) — FRINGE/OCCULT PUBLICATION. Retain with caveat; Case Status: Insufficient Data
Date: October 15, 1928
Location: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Time: Unknown
Summary: Skeptical ufologists indicate that a tabloid newspaper has published 27 years after the alleged event, that on October 15, 1928, in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, farmer Velma Thayer claimed a flying saucer landed and little fellows, who were blond and four feet six inches to five feet three inches tall emerged and stayed for ten days. One of them, named Ramu, said they came from Saturn and were part of a scout ship with peaceful intentions. It is said that Thayer claimed the U.S. military placed a single guard around the saucer and high-ranking officials inspected it, but the saucer flew off when the guard fell asleep. Thayer says she occasionally makes contact with the beings.
Source:almost certainly a tabloid publication circa 1955. Apply same caveat as Dade City and Tehachapi: TABLOID SOURCE / CONTACTEE NARRATIVE / 27-YEAR RETROSPECTIVE / NOT A VERIFIED FIELD REPORT. Case Status: Insufficient Data.
Date: November 1928
Location: Milton, N.D.
Time: 20:30
Summary: A UFO, round “like an inverted soup plate,” sped overhead emitting rays of light which illuminated the ground and startled cattle.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date : November 1928
Location : Bolton, Lancashire, England
Time: late evening
Summary: A young boy, Henry Thomson, playing with a gang of friends was running through a dark alley when he saw in the backyard of a house three strange figures peering into a lighted living room. The central figure was tallest; it turned and looked at the witness. He mumbled at the other two and they all turned. A wide black eyepiece divided down the center by a ribbed silver piece covered the face of the tall entity. All three appeared to be wearing inflatable rubber suits with dark boots. On their heads were transparent dome-like helmets. Tubes came from these and joined tanks that were on their backs. They had pale heads shaped like light bulbs, slit-like eyes, scarcely any nose, and no visible mouth. One made a strange noise, and all three began to move toward the boy. He ran away from the area in terror. The entity description is highly specific and distinctive — inflatable rubber suits, dome helmets with back-tank tubes, ribbed silver eyepiece divider — with no available 1928 cultural source for this morphology. CE-III classification.
Source: Norman Oliver shared with us in Quest UFO Magazine Vol. 11 # 4
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Hexagonal Craft and the Bolton Entities — 1928’s Structural Detail Record
The year 1928 is the most entity-rich in the 1920–1929 series with four separate CE-III or CE-IV events — Yakima Washington, Monsey New York, Leicester England, and Bolton Lancashire — across a single calendar year spanning two continents. The Yakima hexagonal craft is the decade’s most architecturally specific pre-1947 craft description: olive drab, hexagonal, riveted, domed, with a framed rectangular window through which a uniformed human-appearing occupant looked directly back at the witness before the craft rotated and departed. That morphological precision — rivets on a vertical section, a 2×3-foot window in a metallic frame, a specific olive drab color — is the pre-contamination structural fingerprint that distinguishes genuine pre-modern observations from culturally-shaped retrospective accounts. No cultural source in 1928 Washington state would have produced a riveted hexagonal olive-drab craft as a fabrication template. The Bolton Lancashire entity encounter adds an equally specific physical description from the opposite end of the world: the rubber suits, dome helmets, back-tank tubes, ribbed silver eyepiece, bulb-shaped heads, and slit eyes that young Henry Thomson observed in that Bolton alley carry no available 1928 British cultural source. The detail density is the credibility marker in both cases — witnesses in 1928 who were fabricating stories would have reached for much simpler descriptions.
The Milton, North Dakota November case — an inverted-soup-plate disc emitting ground-illuminating rays and frightening cattle, sourced through NICAP/Hall — adds a cross-species (bovine reaction) CE-I to a year whose entity content is its defining feature. The Lake Geneva and Zoutpansberg entries represent the page’s credibility range — tabloid contactee narrative at one end, BSRA occult publication at the other — and both carry appropriate source caveats. Between these poles, 1928 produces a case record whose structural and entity description quality is the highest single-year density in the pre-1930 archive.
From the Bolton, Lancashire, England entry (November 1928), sourced via Oliver, Norman, Quest UFO Magazine Vol. 11 No. 4:
“A wide black eyepiece divided down the center by a ribbed silver piece covered the face of the tall entity. All three appeared to be wearing inflatable rubber suits with dark boots. On their heads were transparent dome-like helmets. Tubes came from these and joined tanks that were on their backs.”
Case summary, Norman Oliver, Quest UFO Magazine, describing Henry Thomson’s November 1928 Bolton encounter
