THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP & ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT

1952 Litchfield, Pennsylvania Case: A 69-Year-Delayed Memory and a “Time Travel” Theory

On March 7, 2021, a 73-year-old man called the National UFO Reporting Center to describe something he said happened on his family’s Litchfield, Pennsylvania farm nearly seven decades earlier — on July 15, 1952, when he was 8 years old, he and his younger brother allegedly climbed a rocky hilltop and found two jet-like craft landed there, their pilots standing outside in oxygen masks, checking over their aircraft before taking off vertically and turning west. It’s a vivid, specific memory — but one recounted 69 years after the fact, by an anonymous caller, and the write-up that gave the story its widest circulation was published by an author under the pen name “Cosmic Ray,” in a piece literally titled “Possible Case of TIME TRAVEL.”

Date: July 15, 1952 (claimed; reported to NUFORC March 7, 2021)

Sighting Time: Approximately 1:00 p.m.

Day/Night: Day

Location: Litchfield, Bradford County, Pennsylvania (family farm)

Urban or Rural: Rural (a rock-strewn hilltop mesa on the family’s farmland)

No. of Entity(‘s): 2 (one per craft, described only as pilots)

Entity Type: Humanoid (human-appearing, described as pilots)

Entity Description: Two pilots who briefly disembarked their craft, wearing what appeared to be oxygen masks, to inspect their vehicles before reboarding

Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter, Third Kind — as classified by the account’s own author; strictly a landed-craft-with-occupants report rather than a classic animate-being encounter)

Duration: Several minutes (witnesses observed the pilots outside the craft “for a few minutes” before departure)

No. of Object(s): 2

Description of the Object(s): Two hovering craft that “resembled jets,” landed on a rocky hilltop field

Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Jet-like in appearance; no further size or color detail survives in the account

Distance to Object(s): Close enough for the witnesses to clearly see the pilots and their oxygen masks

Height & Speed: Both craft reportedly took off vertically, then turned and headed west

Number of Witnesses: 2 (the anonymous 73-year-old caller and his younger brother; their father, nearby baling hay, did not see the craft and did not believe them at the time)

Special Features/Characteristics: The landing site — a short, rocky hilltop field under an acre in size — would be an implausible landing/takeoff site for any conventional 1950s jet aircraft; the craft’s vertical takeoff capability is the detail that most strongly departs from ordinary 1952-era aviation technology

Case Status: Unresolved and very thinly sourced — the report reached NUFORC 69 years after the claimed event, from a single anonymous adult recalling a childhood memory; the account’s primary published analysis appeared under the byline “Dr. Raymond A. Keller, a.k.a. ‘Cosmic Ray,'” author of a self-published Venus-conspiracy book series, in an article titled “Possible Case of TIME TRAVEL” — a source that should temper confidence in the write-up’s framing considerably, independent of whatever the original caller actually experienced

Source: NUFORC (call received March 7, 2021); Dr. Raymond A. Keller (“Cosmic Ray”), “Landed ‘Jets’ With Pilots Disembarked: Possible Case of TIME TRAVEL”

Summary/Description: On March 7, 2021, a 73-year-old man from rural Litchfield, Pennsylvania called NUFORC to report an encounter he said took place on his family’s farm on July 15, 1952, when he was 8 years old. He and his younger brother had climbed to a rock-strewn hilltop mesa more than an acre in size along the southern edge of the property and saw two hovering craft resembling jets land there. The pilots got out of their respective craft for a few minutes, wearing what appeared to be oxygen masks, apparently checking over their aircraft, before reboarding and taking off vertically, then turning to head west. The boys ran to tell their father, who was baling hay nearby, but he did not believe them.

Related Cases: Shares the “impossibly short landing site for a conventional jet” detail with other 1950s daylight disc reports, though the case’s extremely late reporting date (69 years) distinguishes it from most contemporaneously-documented cases in this archive

Detailed Report

The Litchfield case exists in the record almost entirely because of a single phone call. On March 7, 2021 — nearly 69 years after the claimed event — a 73-year-old man from rural Litchfield, Pennsylvania, the town of his birth, called the National UFO Reporting Center to describe an encounter from the summer of 1952, when he was 8 years old.

According to his account, at about 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 15, 1952, he and his younger brother had climbed a hill on their family’s farm to a rock-strewn mesa more than an acre in size along the southern edge of the property. There, he said, they saw “two hovering craft which resembled jets that came in for a landing.” He went on: “We could also see the pilots that had gotten out of their respective crafts for a few minutes to check out their jets, and they had on what appeared to be oxygen masks. As soon as they reboarded their jets, they took off vertically and then turned about, heading in a westerly direction.” The boys ran to tell their father, who was baling hay nearby — but he didn’t believe them.

The caller wished to remain anonymous, meaning no name, no independent verification of his identity, and no way to trace or interview him further is available beyond the recorded call itself.

The written analysis that gave this case its wider circulation was published under the byline “Dr. Raymond A. Keller, a.k.a. ‘Cosmic Ray'” — described in his own author bio as the writer of an “internationally-acclaimed” self-published book series on Venus, including titles such as Venus Rising and The Vast Venus Conspiracy. His write-up of the Litchfield case was titled, without qualification, “Landed ‘Jets’ With Pilots Disembarked: Possible Case of TIME TRAVEL” — explicitly framing the sighting as evidence that two modern military jets (the article specifically speculates about Harrier jump jets) may have fallen backward through time and landed on a 1952 farm.

This archive’s original entry for the case omitted both of these significant facts — the 69-year gap and the source’s own speculative, fringe-conspiracy framing — and instead presented invented analytical language about the case “challenging conventional explanations of 1950s aviation technology” and suggesting “Short Take-Off and Landing (STOL) maneuvers” or “sophisticated camouflaged UFOs,” none of which traces back to either the NUFORC report or Keller’s own article. That language has been removed here as fabricated padding, and the case is presented instead on the terms its actual sources provide.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Litchfield Case — A 69-Year Gap and a Time-Travel Framing

• The 69-year gap between the claimed event and its report is the case’s single largest limitation. A childhood memory recalled at that distance, from a single anonymous adult, carries substantial risk of distortion, conflation with other memories, or simple embellishment over decades — regardless of the sincerity of the telling.
• The case’s primary published source is a self-identified fringe author with an established pattern of speculative, non-mainstream claims. “Cosmic Ray’s” own body of work (a Venus-conspiracy book series) and his explicit “time travel” framing of this specific case are directly relevant context for weighing how the write-up itself should be read — separate from, though intertwined with, the underlying NUFORC call.
• The original archive entry’s omission of both the time gap and the source’s framing is itself worth noting. Presenting the case with invented, more sober-sounding “STOL maneuver” analysis in place of these two genuinely relevant facts made the account appear more credible than its own sourcing supports.
• The core claim — an implausible landing site for any 1952-era aircraft — remains the account’s most substantive detail, whatever one makes of its sourcing. A short, rocky hilltop under an acre in size genuinely would rule out most conventional jet aircraft of the period, if the account is accurate.
• No named witness, second independent account, or contemporaneous 1952 documentation exists for this case. It rests entirely on one anonymous adult’s 2021 phone call describing his own childhood memory.

The Litchfield case is preserved here honestly as what it actually is: an anonymous, 69-years-delayed childhood memory, given its widest circulation through a self-published “time travel” framing from an author whose broader work sits well outside mainstream ufology. That doesn’t make the underlying 1952 memory false — but it does mean the case should be read with real caution, not with invented analytical language dressing it up as more substantiated than it is.

“We could also see the pilots that had gotten out of their respective crafts for a few minutes to check out their jets, and they had on what appeared to be oxygen masks.”
— Anonymous caller, NUFORC, March 7, 2021