June 1946 — three cases: Howard Menger's formative Venusian encounter in New Jersey, an early Swedish ghost rocket sighting over Katrineholm, and a thinly documented Pentagon sighting. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1946: June UFO & Entity Sightings Archive
June 1946 is the month the Swedish “ghost rocket” wave began building toward the 2,000-plus reports it would generate by year’s end — cigar-shaped and rocket-like objects over Katrineholm and Eskilstuna, joining the pattern already underway from May. The same month, in rural New Jersey, a 24-year-old sign painter named Howard Menger says he returned to a childhood meeting spot and found a bell-shaped saucer landing in an apple orchard — the encounter that, a decade later, would make him one of the most famous UFO contactees in America.
Date: June 1, 1946
Location: Katrineholm, Södermanland, Sweden
Time: 11:43
Summary: A cigar-shaped object was observed. One silver, rocket-like object was observed by several witnesses.
Source: AFU Sweden (Archives for the Unexplained)
Date: June 12, 1946
Location: Eskilstuna, Södermanland, Sweden
Time: 20:00
Summary: A cigar-shaped object was observed by one experienced male witness.
Source: Loren E. Gross, Mystery of the Ghost Rockets, self-published, Fremont, 1974
Date: June 1946
Location: Concoules, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Time: 19:00
Summary: An object which flew in a straight line across the sky was reported.
Source: Jacques Vallée
Date: June 1946
Location: High Bridge, New Jersey
Time: Unknown
Summary: Howard Menger, a 24-year-old sign painter recently discharged from the Army, reported returning to a spot in the woods near his boyhood home where, at age 10, he had first encountered a woman he later identified as an extraterrestrial. According to his account, a bell-shaped craft landed nearby, reflecting sunlight “like a mirror.” Two men and a woman emerged; Menger recognized the woman as the same figure from his childhood encounter, who told him she was more than 500 years old and had not aged. This June 1946 meeting became, in Menger’s later published accounts, the point at which his lifelong “contactee” relationship with Venusian visitors formally began, preceding his public emergence in 1956.
Source: Brad Steiger, Strangers From the Skies, Award Books A171X, New York, 1966; Howard Menger, From Outer Space to You (1959) and The High Bridge Incident (1991)
Source Status: CONTACTEE — Menger became one of the most prominent contactees of the 1950s UFO movement; his claims, including staged or fabricated photographs later acknowledged as based on other sources, have been extensively disputed, and Menger himself offered shifting accounts of his experiences across decades of retelling. Retained as a documented, historically significant contactee claim, not as an established event.
Editorial note: This entry was previously misplaced at the end of this archive’s May 1946 page despite its June date. Restored to its correct month here.
Date: Mid-1946
Location: Norrland, Sweden
Time: Unknown
Summary: An object was observed by more than two witnesses; metallic traces were found. This entry references the broader Swedish “ghost rocket” wave, which ultimately generated over 2,000 reported sightings of similar objects nationwide through the end of 1946.
Source: Flying Saucer Review
Date: Mid-1946
Location: Pentagon, Virginia
Time: 14:30
Summary: An object was sighted with an appearance and performance beyond the capability of known earthly aircraft. One object was observed by one witness (DeWitt) for over three minutes.
Source: Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1968 Source Status: INSUFFICIENT DATA — no further identifying detail on the named witness “DeWitt” or independent corroboration located.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
June 1946 — The Ghost Rocket Wave Builds, and a Future Contactee’s Story Begins
The Swedish entries this month — Katrineholm, Eskilstuna, and the broader Norrland reference — are early data points in what would become the defining UFO wave of 1946: cigar- and rocket-shaped objects reported across Sweden and neighboring countries, eventually totaling roughly 2,000 sightings by year’s end, some 200 of them corroborated by radar. This revision restores the Howard Menger entry, previously misplaced on the May archive despite carrying a June date. Menger’s account belongs in this record as a documented and historically significant contactee claim — one that would not become publicly known for another decade, and that helped define the “friendly Venusian” contactee genre alongside George Adamski’s roughly contemporaneous claims.
“But you haven’t changed.” “Of course not.”
Howard Menger, recounting his June 1946 reunion with the woman he said he first met as a child, High Bridge, New Jersey.
