Four cases from November 1951, headlined by the playful Mojave, California disc encounter and the Terest-Houthulst, Belgium landing.
1951: November
UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
November 1951 brought a memorably playful landed-disc encounter near Mojave, California, whose occupants seemed to “play” with two curious forest observers before vanishing “like a magician’s trick,” alongside a detailed CE-III landing in Terest-Houthulst, Belgium, documented in full below. The month also carries a genuine mid-air near-collision precursor to the following year’s famous Washington, D.C. UFO flap, and a cluster of cryptid encounters spanning England, Canada, and New Jersey.
Date: November 1951
Location: Garston, Liverpool, England
Time: Night
Summary: Two witnesses (a third person present was unable to see anything) were driving through a ship-breaking yard when their headlights caught a strange creature — a humanoid roughly six feet six inches tall, wearing tight-fitting plum-colored trousers, with hair standing up in a brush four to five inches high. It moved with an ape-like gait and was quickly lost from sight.
Source: Janet & Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain
Date: October 1951 or November 1952 (source records both possible dates)
Location: Terest-Houthulst, Belgium
Time: 20:15
Summary: Mr. and Mrs. H.C., returning from visiting family, saw a flaming, rounded object land at the corner of the Sleepstraat and Kleine Sleepstraat streets. Before landing, its upper side opened and seven small, red-skinned beings appeared, with large heads and ears, tiny eye-holes, and short legs; three came to the ground, one walking around the object to apparently check its four-legged landing gear. At a signal from one being, the others returned inside and it took off. Mr. H.C. tried to approach but was driven back by a hot beam of light aimed just ahead of his feet. Numerous people leaving a nearby cinema also saw the phenomenon’s light from a distance. See the Full Report.
Source: Luis R. González Manso, First HUMCAT catalogue
Date: November 1, 1951
Location: Not specified
Time: Unknown
Summary: A reference entry to AFM 50-12, the Air Force’s Ground Observer’s Guide, rather than a specific sighting; no incident detail survives.
Source: AFM 50-12, Ground Observer’s Guide
Date: November 2, 1951 (BBU)
Location: 30-35 miles north of Mojave, California
Time: 11:00 p.m.
Summary: Forest observer Bromley and a colleague, in a canyon, saw a well-defined, blue-green, disc-shaped object roughly 30 feet across and 10 feet thick, surrounded by a glow of the same color, hovering to the southwest. Stopping their jeep, they signaled to the object, which approached to within a short distance, flew away, and seemed to “play” with them before vanishing “like a magician’s trick.”
Source: Jacques Vallée, Magonia case 85; FUFOR Index
Date: November 2 or 7, 1951 (BBU)
Location: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma
Time: Unknown
Summary: A green fireball was widely reported across the four-state region.
Source: LIFE magazine, Incident 10
Date: November 7, 1951
Location: Lake Superior
Time: Unknown
Summary: A steamship captain and crew watched an elongated orange object with six glowing “portholes” speed toward Ontario.
Source: Unknown
Date: November 10, 1951
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: The eighth fireball reported in 13 days was seen here and as far away as Wyoming.
Source: United Press
Date: November 18, 1951 (BBU)
Location: Washington, D.C.
Time: 3:20 a.m.
Summary: The crew of Capital Airlines Flight 610 and Andrews AFB senior air traffic controller Tom Selby saw an object with several lights follow the DC-4 for about 20 miles before turning back; ground radar reportedly tracked the object as well, though this detail is uncertain in the surviving source. A notable early precursor, in the same city, to the far more famous Washington, D.C. UFO flap of July 1952.
Source: Berliner; FUFOR Index
Date: November 22, 1951
Location: Queens County, New Brunswick, Canada
Time: 18:00
Summary: Herman Belyea, returning home, struck a pole fence with his axe before crossing it, then heard five loud yells from the woods; walking on, he heard several more before seeing something leap toward him. The creature closed the distance, reared up on its hind legs with its mouth open and forepaws waving, and charged; Belyea swung his axe and missed, then ran, with the creature repeatedly retreating into the woods and charging again before finally leaving for good. He described it as black or gray, roughly six feet tall, with a two-foot tail.
Source: Jerome Clark & Loren Coleman, Creatures of the Goblin World
Date: November 22, 1951
Location: Gibbstown, New Jersey
Time: Night
Summary: A group of youngsters gathered at the Dupont Clubhouse; one boy glanced out a window to see a “thing” staring at him, blood oozing from its face. The chaperone called police, but the creature had disappeared by the time officers arrived.
Source: Michael Norman & Beth Scott, Haunted America
Date: November 23, 1951
Location: Riverside, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: No summary or source text survives for this entry beyond a photograph associated with it (which serves as this page’s featured image); the underlying case detail was never recorded or has been lost. Preserved here as a placeholder pending further research.
Source: Unknown
Date: November 24, 1951 (BBU)
Location: Mankato, Minnesota
Time: 3:53 p.m.
Summary: One of two USAF pilots flying P-51 fighters west at 25,000 feet and 210 knots, Capt. William Fairbrother, saw a white, roughly 8-foot, flying-wing-shaped object hover, then pass 100 feet over and 100 feet to the left of his fighter. He immediately turned 180 degrees to follow but could not locate the object again.
Source: Project 1947; NARCAP; FUFOR Index
Date: November 24, 1951 (BBU)
Location: Lower Michigan (multiple sites)
Time: Between 23:20 and 23:25 Z
Summary: Six observers at five different points across lower Michigan reported an unusual flying object in the southeast quadrant of their sky, traveling at speeds as fast as or faster than a jet aircraft, on a southwesterly to westerly course parallel to the ground, generally estimated below 2,000 feet altitude. The object was variously described as round, football-shaped, egg-shaped, and bullet-shaped. Part of a broader cluster of reports across Michigan the same evening — see the Coopersville and Selfridge AFB entries below.
Source: Dan Wilson
Date: November 24, 1951 (BBU)
Location: Coopersville, Michigan
Time: 5:34 p.m. (possibly 5:25 p.m. CST)
Summary: The pilot of Capital Airlines Flight 94 and ground observers saw a large, round object flying at 500-1,000 feet altitude at roughly 1,000 mph. Part of the same evening’s Michigan cluster as the Lower Michigan and Selfridge AFB entries.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index
Date: November 24, 1951 (BBU)
Location: Selfridge AFB, Michigan
Time: 6:20 p.m. (daylight saving time uncertain)
Summary: Two men at Selfridge AFB saw a large, oblong, brilliantly lit object moving rapidly with no audible sound and a red exhaust. At 2320Z, for unexplained reasons, the base’s radar ceased operation; the pilot involved in the Coopersville sighting the same evening had also heard that a classified radar location had separately picked up an unidentified return 20 miles east of the station, and assumed this was the subject of a related phone inquiry. The third and final entry in this evening’s Michigan cluster.
Source: Dan Wilson
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A Playful Encounter and a Precursor to Washington’s Famous Flap
November 1951’s most memorable entry is also its gentlest: the Mojave, California sighting, in which a hovering disc responded to two forest observers’ signal by approaching, departing, and seeming to “play” with them before vanishing entirely — a rare note of apparent whimsy in a record more often defined by military intercepts and radar tracks. That said, the month’s real historical significance lies in Washington, D.C., where a Capital Airlines crew and an Andrews AFB controller watched an object pace their DC-4 for 20 miles — a quiet preview, in the same city, of the far more publicized UFO flap that would grip the capital the following July. A cluster of three related Michigan sightings on November 24, spanning visual, radar, and radar-outage reports within the same evening, rounds out the month’s strongest military-adjacent pattern.
“…seemed to play with them, vanished ‘like a magician’s trick.'”
— Jacques Vallée, Magonia, on the November 2, 1951 sighting north of Mojave, California
