June 1948 — three cases: Soviet test pilot Apraksin's electrical failure over Kapustin Yar, the Hemer, Germany shepherd's entity encounter, and an unverified Taunton, Massachusetts abduction account. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1948: June UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
This page contained an internal duplicate: the Hemer, Germany shepherd encounter — artificial fog, an electric shock on contact, small grey entities collecting soil samples — appeared twice, once under “Hemer Sauerland” near the top of the page and again under “H Hemer, Nordrhein-Westfalen” near the bottom, both citing the same researcher, Illobrand von Ludwiger. Merged here into a single entry. The month’s strongest case by far is June 16’s Kapustin Yar incident — a named Soviet test pilot’s aircraft suffering total electrical failure after being struck by a beam of light, corroborated across three independent specialist sources spanning Soviet, British, and French-Canadian ufology.
Date: Summer 1948, approximately 10:40
Location: Hemer, Sauerland, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Time: Morning
Summary: A shepherd (identified in one source as Ernst-August R.) guarding his flock in an isolated grassy area watched his sheep scatter in panic. He heard a rushing sound and saw a large, metallic, domed object, roughly 80 feet across, emerge from what appeared to be an artificial fog and land nearby. Approaching and touching the object, he received a strong electrical shock and was knocked unconscious. He woke roughly 80 meters away, surrounded by several short entities about a meter tall — large heads, large slanted almond-shaped eyes, narrow mouths, small noses, bulging foreheads with short stubby hair — each with a box on its chest connected to tubes they periodically raised and breathed into. The beings gesticulated and spoke among themselves in an unknown language. Five additional humanoids stood near the still fog-wrapped craft, collecting soil samples into large containers. All the beings eventually re-entered the object, which departed at high speed with a loud whining sound. Burnt spots were later found at the landing site.
Source: Illobrand von Ludwiger, MUFON 1993 Symposium Proceedings
Editorial note: This entry previously appeared twice on this page, under two slightly different location labels (“Hemer Sauerland Germany” and “H Hemer, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany”), both citing the same researcher, Ludwiger. Merged into a single entry here.
Date: Summer 1948: Stavropol Region, North Caucasus, Russia Abduction
Date: Summer 1948
Location: Selma, Alabama
Time: Evening
Summary: During a large family reunion, one family member spotted what appeared to be a giant bird landing beside a tree, only to realize on closer look that it had a human form. As more of the family gathered, the creature — more human than animal in overall appearance — stared back at them with gleaming red eyes before abruptly flying off without flapping its wings.
Source: Ron Schaffner
Date: Summer 1948
Location: Horsham, Sussex, England
Time: Evening
Summary: E.J.A. Reynolds, a young boy setting rabbit traps on a hillside, watched a small, hairy man — no more than eighteen inches tall, entirely covered in hair except for a bare, leather-textured face with a sharp nose, with arms longer than a human’s — step out from a blackberry bush. It did not notice him, and eventually turned and vanished back into the bush. A few days later, Reynolds saw the same figure again, first from an upstairs bus window, and later that same day walking across a lawn in a large garden.
Source: Janet Bord, Faeries: Real Encounters with the Little People
Date: Summer 1948
Location: Carthage, Ohio
Time: Night
Summary: Security guards at a local plant twice spotted a strange, man-like figure walking back and forth inside a vacant steel building, first accompanied by what was described as a “shaggy dog” or “young lion,” and on a second occasion by a black dog and a white dog. No tracks were ever found.
Source: UFO Research Cincinnati
Date: Summer 1948
Location: Near Taunton, Massachusetts
Time: Night
Summary: A 5-year-old boy, woken by a bright metallic-green light through his closed eyelids, saw a shaft of green light in the farmyard through his curtains and, assuming his uncle was digging night crawlers with a new lantern, went outside to look. Instead he found a tall, blue-white, spade-shaped cylindrical object roughly twelve feet tall. His body reportedly vibrated and felt weightless; he found himself inside a glowing red corridor beside a very tall, golden-haired man in a metallic uniform, who guided him by the shoulder into a small room with a central pedestal table. He was lifted onto the table for what he understood as a medical examination under a purple light, felt a tickling sensation, lost consciousness, and briefly recalled seeing several bald-headed silhouettes before finding himself again behind the chicken coop and running back to bed.
Source: Lightthink.com Source Status: INSUFFICIENT DATA — no named investigator, publication, or independent corroboration was located for this account beyond a general-purpose website; the narrative’s structure (an escorting “space brother” figure, a medical examination table, purple light, a felt physical sensation, and a return to the exact spot of departure) closely follows conventions that became standard in later abduction literature. Retained as a documented claim, not as an established event.
Date: Summer 1948
Location: Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, Odessa Region, Ukraine
Time: Night
Summary: Several teenagers fishing along the Dnestrovsky Gulf near an ancient fortress, under bright moonlight, spotted several humanoid figures walking atop the fortress walls, apparently horned, though no further detail could be made out in the darkness; the boys fled home with their gear. Local legend holds that these entities live underground beneath the fortress, using disguised tunnels, and cannot tolerate daylight; one version of the legend ties the entities to a UFO that reportedly crashed in the region in the distant past. A separate, more prosaic local hypothesis holds that the figures were surviving Romanian soldiers hiding in the fortress after WWII, their distinctive field caps resembling horns or a tri-star shape in silhouette.
Source: Yuriy Misyuk, local folklore researcher, in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moscow, September 15-16, 2004
Date: June 1948
Location: Howe, Idaho
Time: Night
Summary: Paul Solem, his wife, and brother-in-law observed three glowing objects flying at high speed. Solem said he mentally directed a question at the objects and received a reply from a “voice” in his head: “We are from another planet. You will hear from us later.”
Source: Jerome Clark
Date: June 1948
Location: Bergerac, Aquitaine, France
Time: 06:30
Summary: A luminous disc spun and descended over a river, stopped, turned horizontally, then followed the river’s course. Observed by two witnesses for two minutes.
Source: Undocumented
Date: June 14, 1948
Location: Viken Coastal Post, Sweden
Time: Unknown
Summary: A flying disc was observed by military witnesses.
Source: Karl Gösta Rehn
Date: June 16, 1948
Location: Kapustin Yar test flight facility, Astrakhan, Soviet Union
Time: Daytime
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Soviet test pilot Apraksin, flying an experimental aircraft over the Kapustin Yar test facility, was tracked on radar approaching a banana- or cucumber-shaped object emitting beams of light. When his aircraft was struck by a cone of light from the object, it suffered total electrical failure — engine and controls both failing — and Apraksin was temporarily blinded. Despite this, he was able to glide the aircraft to a landing. [Full Report]
Source: Felix Zigel, unpublished manuscript, p. 124; Geoffrey Falla, BUFORA Vehicle Interference Project, p. 004; Jacques Vallée, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: A Cosmic Samizdat, p. 137 Source Status: VERIFIED — a named test pilot, radar tracking data, and independent cross-referencing across Soviet, British, and Vallée’s own dedicated research into Soviet-era UFO cases, giving this case an unusually strong multi-national documentary trail.
Date: June 20, 1948
Location: Scott AFB, Belleville, Illinois
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail preserved in the surviving source material.
Source: McDonald list (BBU)
Date: June 1948
Location: Glenwillow, Ohio
Time: Unknown
Summary: One object was observed by two witnesses for over one minute (Edic).
Source: NICAP
Date: June 29, 1948
Location: West Uniontown, Pennsylvania
Time: 23:00
Summary: Mrs. Catherine MacDonald and Mrs. Margaret Hollar saw an oval, luminous object “rolling” vertically on its edge in level or climbing flight at roughly 5,000 feet, below the clouds, with a short trail, moving southwest to northeast. Two similar objects were seen at five-minute intervals; the second appeared transparent, with lightning visible flashing behind it. Police were called, and a second and third object were subsequently seen independently by Police Sgt. Charles Schulz (or Schuh) and MacDonald’s daughter Catherine, and again by another neighbor and her daughter — a third object was estimated at 6,000-9,000 feet, on the same southwest-to-northeast path.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: June 30, 1948
Location: South Knoxville, Tennessee
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail preserved in the surviving source material.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: June 30, 1948
Location: Hecla, South Dakota
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail preserved in the surviving source material.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: Mid-1948
Location: Runfold, Surrey, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: A hovering object was observed; nocturnal lights were reported (Green).
Source: BUFORA
Date: Mid-1948
Location: Finnmark Province, Norway
Time: Unknown
Summary: Telepathic phenomena were reported. One object, roughly 40 feet across, was observed by one experienced male witness on the shore (Rasanen).
Source: UFO Information Sweden
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
June 1948 — A Test Pilot’s Blackout, and a Merged Duplicate
The Kapustin Yar incident stands well above this month’s other entries in documentary strength: a named Soviet test pilot, radar tracking, and total electrical failure following contact with a light beam, all cross-referenced across three independent researchers working in three different countries. This revision also merges an internal duplicate — the Hemer, Germany shepherd encounter appeared twice on this page under two slightly different place-name spellings, both drawn from the same researcher’s account. The Taunton, Massachusetts case, elaborate and specific as it is, is flagged honestly: its only located source is a general-purpose website with no named investigator, and its structure closely tracks later abduction-genre conventions.
“The experimental aircraft he was flying experienced a total electrical failure when it was hit by a cone of light.”
Jacques Vallée, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union, describing the June 16, 1948 Kapustin Yar incident.
