The first two sightings of the Brush Creek, California craft — March 20 and May 20, 1953 — before its occupant appeared in June.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
1953: The Brush Creek, California Sightings — March & May
Twice that spring, miner John Q. Black watched the same silvery, tripod-legged disc show up at the same spot in a remote Butte County, California canyon — once descending from the sky in March, then resting on the ground and taking off again in May, leaving the streamside rocks too hot to touch. Neither visit had an occupant. That would come exactly one month later, on June 20 — a close encounter detailed enough to warrant its own report.
Date: March 20 and May 20, 1953
Sighting Time: Evening (May 20 sighting logged at 6:30 p.m.; March 20 time not specified)
Day/Night: Day/Evening
Location: Brush Creek, California — at the junction of the Jordan and Marble Creeks, Butte County
Urban or Rural: Rural
No. of Entity(‘s): 0 — no occupant reported on either of these two dates
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: DD (Daylight Disc)
Duration: Not precisely specified for either sighting
No. of Object(s): 1 (the same craft on both dates, per the witness)
Description of the Object(s): March 20: described only as “like a piece of circular aluminum” descending from the sky. May 20: a silvery disc resting on the ground with tripod landing gear, later specified in the June 20 account as roughly 8 ft wide and 4-4.5 ft thick, resembling “a couple of soup plates put together.”
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Disc-shaped, silvery/aluminum-colored, tripod landing gear
Distance to Object(s): Not precisely specified for either date
Height & Speed: Not specified for the March descent; the May 20 object took off from the ground, speed not given
Number of Witnesses: 1 (John Q. Black, on both dates)
Special Features/Characteristics: On May 20, the object’s takeoff left nearby streamside rocks hot to the touch and ash in the water — a physical trace independent of witness testimony alone; this is the same craft and same witness who would return to the same canyon exactly one month later, on June 20, and this time find it occupied
Case Status: Unresolved — the opening two sightings of a three-part single-witness case; see the June 20, 1953 standalone for the full entity encounter that followed
Source: Wallace Kunkel for Fate; Ted Bloecher, citing a July 25, 1953 wire dispatch, New York World-Telegram and Sun
Summary/Description: Miner John Q. Black first saw an object “like a piece of circular aluminum” descend near the junction of the Jordan and Marble Creeks in Butte County, California, on March 20, 1953. Exactly two months later, on May 20, he saw what appeared to be the same silvery, tripod-legged disc resting on the ground in the canyon, then watched it take off — leaving nearby rocks too hot to touch and ash in the stream. No occupant was seen on either occasion. Black would return to the same spot exactly one month later, on June 20, 1953, and this time find the craft occupied.
Related Cases: 1953: The Brush Creek Water Carrier — June 20, 1953 (the third sighting, in which the craft’s occupant appeared)
Detailed Report
The Brush Creek, California case unfolds across three separate dates, each falling on the 20th of consecutive months — March, May, and June of 1953 — and each involving the same witness, miner John Q. Black, at the same remote location near the junction of the Jordan and Marble Creeks in Butte County. This report covers the first two of those three encounters; the third, and by far the most detailed, is documented separately.
On March 20, 1953, Black saw something descending from the sky that he could only describe, at the time, as resembling a piece of circular aluminum. The account preserves little more detail than that — a brief, unexplained descent, seen and then gone.
He returned to the area, or happened to be there again, on May 20 — exactly two months later. This time the object wasn’t just glimpsed in flight; it was on the ground, a silvery disc resting on tripod landing gear in the canyon. Black watched it take off. What it left behind was more interesting than the takeoff itself: the rocks near the stream were left too hot to touch, and ash was visible in the water afterward — a physical trace that didn’t depend on Black’s testimony alone to be observed.
Neither the March nor the May sighting involved any occupant. That changed on Black’s next visit to the same spot, exactly one month after the May sighting, on June 20 — an encounter substantial enough, and different enough in character from these first two purely aerial/landed sightings, to be documented as its own report.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
Brush Creek — 1953 and a Correction Worth Making Plainly
- A correction to this archive’s own earlier record: An earlier version of this entry, drawing on a secondary source (Magonia 109) that named a second witness (John Van Allen) and dated the occupant encounter to May 20, has been revised after locating the fuller, better-sourced account — a contemporary 1953 wire dispatch and a Fate magazine article, both cited via researcher Ted Bloecher — which places the occupant encounter on June 20, with Black alone. This entry now reflects that correction; the June 20 account should be treated as the more reliable of the two regarding what happened on which date.
- A monthly recurrence: Three sightings, each on the 20th of the month, each a month apart, at the same location — whatever the underlying explanation, that regularity is itself an unusual and specific pattern worth noting plainly.
- A physical trace independent of testimony: The hot rocks and ash left behind after the May 20 takeoff are the kind of detail that, in principle, could have been examined by someone other than Black — though no indication survives that anyone else did so at the time.
- Escalating detail across three visits: The progression from a vague aerial glimpse (March) to a landed, departing craft with a physical trace (May) to a full occupant encounter (June) reads as a case gaining detail and stakes with each retelling — worth flagging as a pattern, without asserting what it implies.
The most important thing about this entry is what it no longer says: an earlier version of this record conflated these two purely object-only sightings with the entity encounter that actually happened a month later. That correction is preserved here openly rather than silently, consistent with how this archive handles its own past errors.
“On 5/20/53, he saw the saucer on the ground in the canyon, & saw it take off, leaving rocks near the stream hot & ashes in the water.”
— Wallace Kunkel for Fate
