October 1947 — three cases: the well-documented Guadalupe, Mexico fireball, the Palmira, Colombia town square sighting, and the disputed Paradise Valley, Arizona crash claim tied to the Frank Scully hoax lineage. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1947: October UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
October 1947’s opening entry, the Paradise Valley, Arizona “crash retrieval,” turns out to be directly tied to one of ufology’s foundational hoaxes: it is one of the four alleged crashes named in Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers — the same book, built on the same two con men (Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer), that produced the notorious and thoroughly debunked Aztec, New Mexico hoax. The month’s strongest genuine case is the October 12 Guadalupe, Mexico fireball, watched by numerous witnesses including a Mexican Army reserve captain, plunging toward the Zamalayuca Mountains with no meteorite ever recovered. The month closes on another quietly significant institutional document — General Schulgen’s SECRET “Intelligence Requirements on Flying Saucer Type Aircraft” memo, issued as Project Sign’s investigative machinery began turning in earnest.
Date: October 1947
Location: Paradise Valley, Arizona
Time: Unknown
Summary: Selman E. Graves, a businessman and private pilot, said he witnessed part of a crash-retrieval operation with two friends during a hunting trip near Cave Creek, north of Phoenix. From a hillside near some mine shafts, the group reportedly watched a large, aluminum-colored, dome-shaped object roughly 36 feet in diameter, with pitched tents and military personnel moving around it; a couple of small humanoids, about 4.5 feet tall, were said to have been recovered at the site.
Source: Timothy Good, Above Top Secret, quoting Frank Scully
Source Status: DISPUTED / HOAX-ADJACENT — already flagged “POSSIBLE HOAX” on the original entry, and for good reason. This is directly one of four alleged 1947-48 crash cases described in Frank Scully’s 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, the same book responsible for the Aztec, New Mexico hoax — a fabrication built by con men Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer, publicly exposed as a fraud in the 1950s. Graves himself did not connect this memory to any UFO event until reading Scully’s book in 1952, five years after the fact. A fellow member of Graves’s own hunting party, when later asked, stated he did not recall any such close encounter at all. Retained as a documented claim within the Scully hoax lineage, not as an established event.
Date: October 1947
Location: Dodgeville, Wisconsin
Time: Approximately 11:00 AM
Summary: An unnamed civilian man watched an undescribed object fly in counterclockwise circles for approximately one hour.
Source: Undocumented (BBU #91)
Editorial note: This entry was previously listed twice on this page under two dates (“Oct., 1947” and “Oct. 11, 1947”), both describing an identical account — same unnamed witness, same undescribed object, same counterclockwise circling, same one-hour duration. Consolidated here into a single entry.
Date: October 8 or 9, 1947
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Time: Unknown
Summary: AAF Reserve Capt. Moore saw an object traveling at 700 mph, leaving an almost white smoke/vapor trail and changing direction from southeast to west.
Source: Undocumented (BBU)
Date: October 12, 1947
Location: Guadalupe, Chihuahua, Mexico
Time: 09:30 CST
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Numerous witnesses saw a cigar-shaped, blue-and-silver fireball trailing blue flame, heading east to west and plunging toward earth like an errant V-2 rocket, appearing to head for impact in the Zamalayuca Mountains with a billow of smoke and a loud explosion. Mexican Army reserve Capt. Aranda watched the fireball from the Hernandez Torres filling station near Caseta and saw it disappear over the sandhills near Colonia Reforma. No meteorites or other remains were found in subsequent searches. [Full Report]
Source: Brad Sparks; Loren Gross, UFOs: A History, Jul-Dec 1947, p. 38, and 1947, pp. 69-71; Supplement, Aug-Dec 1947, pp. 44-45 Source Status: VERIFIED — multiple witnesses including a named military officer, extensively cross-referenced in Loren Gross’s detailed compilation across three separate publications.
Date: October 14 (possibly 12), 1947
Location: 11 miles NNE of Cave Creek, Arizona
Time: 12:00 MDT
Summary: Ex-AAF fighter pilot J.L. Clark, civilian pilot Anderson, and a third man saw a 3-foot “flying wing,” black against white clouds and red against blue sky, flying straight at an estimated 380 mph, at 8,000-10,000 feet, from northwest to southeast. Duration 45-60 seconds.
Source: Undocumented (BBU #95)
Date: October 15, 1947
Location: Palmira, Colombia
Time: 21:00
Summary: Following a vocal concert in this small town near Cali, Colombia, a crowd of roughly 65 people who had followed the performer to the town square to socialize and collect autographs noticed a large, neon blue-green object resembling a full moon near the mountains. It made no sound beyond a very low-grade electrical hum, hovering over the square for nearly an hour, pulsating brighter and darker in the same color, roughly the size of a football stadium and effectively covering the square. It then zigzagged away, leaving a comet-like trail, before departing straight upward at high speed.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center; United Press International wire reports from the period Editorial note: This account and the following Pereira, Colombia entry are recollections from the same witness — a concert artist and voice teacher on tour through Colombia — describing two separate sightings on consecutive tour stops, one night apart.
Date: October 16, 1947
Location: Pereira, Colombia
Time: 12:00
Summary: The same touring concert artist, arriving in Pereira for a midday performance, found everyone in town looking up at a large, metallic-looking circular object holding a single position in the sky for nearly 12 hours; as darkness fell, it began pulsating blue-green, the same coloring reported at Palmira the night before. The object was still hovering over the town when the witness departed for the next stop on her concert tour.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center, direct witness account (a concert artist and voice teacher, trained in Chile and Italy, later based in North Hollywood, California, with a performance history including Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Opera)
Date: October 20, 1947
Location: Xenia, Ohio
Time: 11:00
Summary: Witness Atkinson saw a round, 1-foot object at 1,500 feet, heading southwest on a straight course.
Source: Undocumented (BBU)
Date: October 20, 1947
Location: Dayton, Ohio
Time: 13:20
Summary: Farmer Britton saw two cigar-shaped objects reflecting brilliant sunlight, traveling west to east on a straight course at high speed, about a mile up, in trail formation roughly a city block apart, emitting a slight vapor trail before disappearing suddenly.
Source: Undocumented (BBU)
Date: October 28, 1947
Location: Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio (Air Materiel Command)
Time: Not applicable
Case Status: Historical/Institutional (not a sighting)
Summary: General George F. Schulgen, chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division, issued a SECRET memorandum titled “Intelligence Requirements on Flying Saucer Type Aircraft,” circulated to Air Materiel Command and other intelligence bodies as part of Project Sign’s early investigative work, roughly five weeks after the ATIC letter of September 23 that had founded the project.
Source: Undocumented on this entry specifically; the Schulgen memo is a documented historical record widely referenced in Project Sign/Blue Book scholarship
Editorial note: This entry preserved only a title with no location, time, or summary detail. The memo is a genuine, well-documented historical artifact of the newly formed Project Sign’s investigation, worth cross-referencing against this archive’s September 23, 1947 ATIC letter, which established the project this memo was operating under.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
October 1947 — A Hoax’s Fingerprints, and a Real Mexican Fireball
This month’s opening entry deserves particular caution: the Paradise Valley, Arizona crash claim is directly one of the four cases described in Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers, the same book, built on the same fabricated sourcing from con men Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer, that produced the notorious Aztec, New Mexico hoax. Witness Selman Graves didn’t connect his 1947 hunting-trip memory to any UFO narrative until reading Scully’s book five years later, and a fellow member of his own hunting party later said he had no memory of any such encounter at all. Set against that, the October 12 Guadalupe, Mexico fireball is a genuinely well-documented case — multiple witnesses including a named military officer, cross-referenced across three separate Loren Gross publications. A duplicated Dodgeville, Wisconsin entry was consolidated, and a two-part Colombian sighting (the same touring concert artist, one night apart in two different towns) is cross-referenced rather than presented as unrelated cases.
“No meteorites or other remains found in searches.”
Loren E. Gross, describing the aftermath of the October 12, 1947 Guadalupe, Mexico fireball.
