1953: November UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

November 1953 holds two of the most significant entries in this entire archive’s 1953 record. Over Lake Superior, an Air Force F-89 vanished without a trace while pursuing an unidentified radar target — two men lost, no wreckage ever found, and a case the Air Force’s own paper trail shows was scrubbed of its UFO-intercept origins after the fact. Half a continent away, on the banks of Arkansas’s St. Francis River, a seven-year-old boy had an experience that would grow, over the following four decades, into one of the most elaborate contactee mythologies in American UFO culture. Between them sit a car-chasing object in Norway that left a watch stopped and paint changed, and a Brazilian bay landing with red-haired occupants close enough to touch.

Date: November 1953
Location: Sjusjoen Bridge, Norway
Time: Unknown
Summary: Mr. Trygve, Mrs. Bufflot, and a neighbor saw an object rise from behind a hill, oscillate over a lake, follow their car, and stop just above the ground ahead of them. They stopped the car and felt “pricklings” until the craft took off vertically. A watch stopped working, and numerous people vouched for the fact that the car’s paint changed from dark beige to bright green.
Source: APRO, March 1962; FSR 56, 5; Magonia 120

Date: November 1953
Location: Near the St. Francis River, northeastern Arkansas
Time: Late night / early morning
Summary: Seven-year-old Riley Martin watched lights above the river for three consecutive nights before following them, on the third night, to a saucer-shaped craft hovering on three legs in a clearing. Two small helmeted beings he later called “Biaviians” led him aboard via a light beam, where he was examined by taller, red-skinned entities he called “Stagyians.” Martin developed the claim over the following decades into an extensive contactee mythology, published as “The Coming of Tan” in 1995, and discussed it for years on the Howard Stern Show until his death in 2015. [Full Report]
Source: Riley Martin, “The Coming of Tan” (1995); George Filer’s “Filer’s Files” #40, 2004

Date: November 23, 1953 BBU
Location: Airspace over Lake Superior, near Kinross Air Force Base, Michigan
Time: Evening
Summary: An Air Defense Command radar controller detected an unidentified target over the Soo Locks. An F-89C Scorpion jet, piloted by 1st Lt. Felix Moncla with 2nd Lt. Robert Wilson as radar operator, was scrambled from Kinross AFB and vectored toward the target for roughly thirty minutes over Lake Superior. Ground control watched the two radar blips merge into one, then vanish entirely. No further radio contact was made, and an overnight search found no wreckage of any kind. The Air Force’s own paper trail was later found by NICAP to have had references to the UFO-intercept nature of the mission removed. [Full Report]
Source: U.S. Air Force accident report records; NICAP investigation files

Date: November 28, 1953
Location: Baia Dos Patos, Brazil
Time: Daytime
Summary: Witnesses Pedro Serrate and Francisco Teixeira were duck hunting when a UFO alighted on the bay, only 15 ft from one of them. The dark blue hull resembled two “basins” put together, 16 ft long, 8 ft high, and 6 ft wide, with a 3-foot rim of transparent glass around its perimeter. Two curved tubes were dripping water, and a rudder-like structure, about 3 ft long, extended behind the hull. Serrate could see four young men and two young women seated in a row inside, all red-haired with pink faces, the women with long hair, all wearing dark blue uniforms. When the occupants noticed they were being observed, the craft took off at fantastic speed and disappeared within seconds.
Source: J. Escobar Faria & Richard Hall

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A Genuine Military Mystery Alongside the Beginning of an American Mythology

November 1953’s two major entries sit at opposite ends of this archive’s evidentiary spectrum, and both are significant for different reasons. The Kinross AFB case is about as well-documented a military mystery as this archive has recorded — official accident reports, NICAP investigation files, three separate and contradictory Air Force explanations, and the specific, serious finding that UFO-related mission details were later removed from the record. Its human cost, two men never found, sets it apart from cases that end only in mystery rather than loss.

The Riley Martin case is a different kind of significant: a single childhood memory that, over four decades, grew into one of the most detailed and culturally visible contactee mythologies in the country, ultimately reaching a national audience through entertainment radio rather than UFO research channels. Both entries are given full, careful treatment here — the Kinross case with an unverified 2005 “discovery” claim clearly separated and flagged, and the Riley Martin case with its evidentiary limitations stated plainly in its own dedicated report.

“At approximately 2355 Zebra the unknown aircraft and the F-89 merged together on the radar scope… No further contact was established with the F-89.”
— Official U.S. Air Force accident report, November 23, 1953