August 1952 Unknown Dates: the reports that never got a day.
1952: August Unknown Dates
UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
August 1952 is crowded with cases that carry a day and an hour, but a handful of reports never did. Suzanne Knight, alone in her kitchen in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, watched a dull silver, fuselage-shaped craft hover outside her window with a helmeted occupant looking straight ahead, a sighting she did not write down for NICAP until 1967. Others surface only as “August 1952,” “Mid-August” or “End of August,” among them a Skylight Mountain, Arkansas sighting of tin-colored saucers, a hooded pair glimpsed in a disc over Bakersfield, California and a small blue-uniformed being that vanished in a field near Fauga, France.
These are the August 1952 UFO sightings and entity encounters whose exact day was never recorded. They sit just outside the daily chronology of the Washington, D.C. radar returns and the Pittsburg, Kansas occupant case, yet they belong to the same summer. Two entries here, a Napa, California sighting and a Pan American crew sighting, are known only by year or season.
Date: August 1952
Location: Skylight Mountain, Washington County, Arkansas
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Summary: Inverted, tin-colored saucers (width-to-thickness ratio roughly 4:1) darted in and out of a cloud bank, completing 5-mile circles in 5 seconds — an implied speed near 3,600 mph.
Source: Berliner; BBU
Date: August 1952
Location: Seat Pleasant, Maryland
Time: 9:30 p.m.
Summary: Suzanne E. Knight, alone in her kitchen, heard a tapping against the window screen and saw a dull silver, wingless, fuselage-shaped object drop at about 45 degrees and hover roughly 300 feet up, half a city block away. Through its row of glowing yellow windows she saw a motionless, helmeted occupant facing forward, and a gondola-like undercarriage with more lit windows. When she returned from trying to phone a newspaper, the occupant and undercarriage were gone, the lights went out, the object turned glowing red and drifted away. The encounter lasted about three minutes. [Full Report]
Source: NICAP (Knight’s written account of September 1967 and a follow-up interview by the Capital Area NICAP Subcommittee)
Source Status: The witness could not recall the day. No police report, newspaper item or Project Blue Book file matches the case, and the account was written fifteen years after the event.
Date: August 1952
Location: Oceanside, Long Island, New York
Time: Late evening
Summary: Alexander McNeill reported that three beings about 90 centimeters (3 feet) tall, with large heads and pointed ears and wearing green overalls, came out of a landed egg-shaped craft, and that one pointed a metal rod at him.
Source: Denys Breysse, Project Becassine, citing New York Magazine (1978); Albert Rosales humanoid catalog
Source Status: A single secondary catalog entry citing a 1978 magazine; no contemporary 1952 record has been located.
Date: August 1952
Location: Falls Church, Virginia
Time: Unknown
Summary: One of 41 formerly classified Air Technical Intelligence UFO reports cleared for Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe by Air Force Press Desk officer Albert M. Chop: ground observers, including police, saw a rotating light. When an officer tilted his scout car’s spotlight upward, the object seemed to descend toward it; the light was hurriedly switched off and the object rose back to its former height, continuing to rotate. No supporting documents were located.
Source: Chop list; Fran Ridge; Chop Clearance List Item #39
Date: Mid-August 1952
Location: Bakersfield, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: Cecil Michael said he saw two heavyset, dark-complexioned, hooded men through an opening in a low-flying disc. He reported a later visit from similar men on October 14. [Full Report]
Source: Robert E. Bartholomew, Ufolore; Albert Rosales humanoid catalog
Date: End of August 1952
Location: Near Fauga, France
Time: About 6 a.m.
Summary: A witness identified only as “M. N.” saw a small being in a blue uniform standing motionless in a field. It vanished in plain sight. [Full Report]
Source: Michel Figuet; Albert Rosales humanoid catalog
Date: Summer 1952
Location: Mining district near Ruth / Ely, White Pine County, Nevada
Time: Between about 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.
Summary: Sheriff Claude House and others watched a bright, humming object light up the sky one night. The next day witnesses who drove toward the Kennecott / Robinson copper mine were turned away from a cordon and told a light plane had crashed. A later legend, popularized by the 2007 travel book Weird Las Vegas and Nevada, adds a recovered saucer and sixteen alien bodies; the sixteen-body figure is likely borrowed from the 1948 Aztec hoax. Logged as Explained. [Full Report]
Source: John Plestina (Ely Times), reporting on Weird Las Vegas and Nevada by Joe Oesterle and Tim Cridland (2007, pp. 63-64)
Source Status: A local legend with no firsthand witness to a craft or bodies; some accounts give August 14, 1952, which is unverified.
Date: 1952
Location: Napa, California
Time: 5 p.m. PDT
Summary: A Ground Observer Corps observer saw a silver-colored, cigar-shaped object the size of a large aircraft overhead at an estimated 10,000 ft, moving on a southwest course at an estimated 800–1,000 mph — against winds that were themselves blowing from the southwest. No sound was heard. Observed for about 30 seconds.
Source: Dan Wilson, BB files
Source Status: The sources give the year only; no month or day is recorded.
Date: Fall 1952
Location: Route between New York and Puerto Rico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Three Pan American Airways pilots (Zammett, Harris, and Hutchins) watched a UFO hover, then speed away.
Source: UFOE, V
Source Status: The sources give the season only (Fall 1952), which falls outside August.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The August 1952 Reports That History Left Undated
Nine reports resist an exact August day. Seat Pleasant is the richest: a single named witness, a close-range look of about three minutes and a detailed description of a lit, windowed craft with a helmeted occupant, but no police report, newspaper item or Blue Book file ever matched it and the account was written fifteen years later. Bakersfield and Fauga are entity reports known from catalogs, and Oceanside, Long Island rests on a single secondary entry citing a 1978 magazine.
Skylight Mountain, Arkansas (a Blue Book Unknown) and Falls Church, Virginia (a Chop list item) carry an “August 1952” date only. Napa, California is a Ground Observer Corps sighting of a silver cigar-shaped object recorded by year alone, the Pan American pilots’ sighting is dated only to the fall, and the Ely crash claim has no date or documentation attached.
“similar to theatre seats”
— Suzanne E. Knight, describing the rows of seats she saw in the craft’s undercarriage, Seat Pleasant, Maryland, August 1952
