UFO Crash Mystery: New Sensational Data on US Investigation Revealed

It happened on December 9, 1965: residents of seven US states and Canada reported seeing a giant fiery object lighting up the night sky.

Ronnie Strubel, 82, who lived in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, at the time, described it as "a ball of fire with a red rooster tail behind it."

Contrary to later reports in which witnesses claim the UFOs they saw were unnaturally fast, Strubel told the Daily Mail that the object he saw was moving at about the speed of a passenger jet. He then said the object crashed in a wooded area in the unincorporated town of Kecksburg, which is in Westmoreland County.

"It took us only 15 or 20 minutes to get to the scene and the military was already there," the eyewitness recalled.

But over the decades, the bizarre event, which was likely witnessed by thousands of people, has largely faded from collective memory, the Daily Mail notes.

That was until the History Channel aired a documentary on the subject earlier in July, in which a team of experts used modern technology to figure out what might have happened all those years ago in Kecksburg.

According to the Daily Mail, the 42-minute episode, titled "Roswell, Pennsylvania," was part of the reality show Beyond Skinwalker Ranch, which focused on locations around the country where paranormal activity has allegedly occurred.

The episode featured Strubel and another local, Bill Weaver. While filming near the crash site, Strubel told the same story, but Weaver added a bit more information about the U.S. government's response.

"There were police and troopers everywhere. And there were guys in dark suits. They seemed to be in charge," Weaver said. "As we were standing there watching, state troopers and police came up to us and said, 'If you don't move, we're going to impound your car.' And I decided I better get going."

Hosted by former CIA officer Andy Bustamante and award-winning journalist Paul Beban, the show explores the many legends surrounding the UFO sighting and crash, including longtime residents who have repeatedly claimed that the object they saw was shaped like an acorn.

An acorn-shaped model of a supposed UFO has stood outside the Kecksburg Volunteer Fire Department since 1990, when it was created as a prop for the NBC show "Unsolved Mysteries."

The program participants also discussed the many explanations given by the U.S. federal government in the days, months, and years following the incident. In the earliest reports, astronomers claimed it was just a meteorite, but this was not given much credence by the unprecedented military presence documented by eyewitnesses and local media.

NASA still maintains that it was most likely a meteorite, but also acknowledges the suggestion that it could have been a Soviet satellite.

Paul Beban pointed out that the strangest thing about the case was that it attracted a lot of media attention at the time before "fading from view" under a "cloak of secrecy."

Bustamante and Beban turned to the expertise of technologist Pete Kelsey in the hope that he could pinpoint the exact location of the UFO crash.

Kelsey used lidar (light detection and ranging) images from a drone and a scanner to create a topographic map of the area that would indicate possible impact points. The team later met to review the scans and found what Kelsey called an area of "human-made excavation."

"It's smooth against this otherwise very steep slope. Straight lines, right angles. That kind of thing doesn't happen in nature," he said.

The experiment participants then returned to the site with portable spectrum analyzers to measure the radio waves.

The suspected crash site had a completely different radio signal than a site just 20 feet away, which had the same frequency, the Daily Mail reports.

"It doesn't make any sense. How can there be a radio signal in one place that isn't there just a few feet away? Radio energy works differently," Bustamante notes.

"We are getting more and more evidence that something strange did happen at this place, in this gorge, in Kecksburg," he added. "We may have found a real crash site."

Strubel spoke about the discoveries at the 20th annual Kecksburg UFO Festival, which he organized with permission from the fire department in 2005. Strubel is a 50-year veteran of the Kecksburg Volunteer Fire Department, once serving as its chief. The three-day festival regularly attracts thousands of visitors from across the United States and the world, he told the Daily Mail.

"People from Japan, Germany, England have come to this small city event that we are holding," he says.

"We had a street fair many years ago, but it fell by the wayside. And it was our idea to have some kind of event to bring some money into the community. So we started the UFO Festival," Strubel said.

It remains unclear what actually happened in Kecksburg six decades ago, but the myths surrounding the UFO crash clearly perpetuate the area to this day.