The following is an article from the October '96 (Vol. 4, #10) issue of The
REALL News.  It may be reprinted by other skeptics organizations as long as
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                      Crash-Retrieval at Gatchellville
                            by Martin Kottmeyer
The historian's warning that Newton was fortunate not to have started a
fire with his kite lantern can be underscored by pointing to another modern
UFO case. On March 8, 1977, a red ball of light was seen over
Gatchellville, Pennsylvania, by 11 witnesses in 6 separate groups. All
witnesses agreed it drifted against the wind in a left to right wobbling
motion for 2 to 5 minutes. Triangulation of observations indicated it was
only a few hundred feet above the ground. It dropped to earth and started a
grass fire. Fortunately it burned itself out before the fire department
arrived, but it left a burned area 100 feet by 30 feet in size. As this was
March, it was a fair bet the grass had not yet greened up from the
winterkill and was tinder dry at the time. Investigators noted the soil was
burned down to a depth of three inches, which sounds consistent with root
length.
No hydrocarbon residues were found; therefore the fire was not assisted by
gasoline. Grass outside the patch, investigators noted, was not combustible
and one is left to wonder if something had dried the grass. The fallacy,
however, is blatant. Since the fire was not put out, it obviously stopped
where it ran out of fuel.
The case was written up in the International UFO Reporter and was rated by
Allan Hendry as a good CEII [Close Encounter of the Second Kind] in The UFO
Handbook, i.e., it was a good example of a UFO case with physical traces
that proved seemingly the reality of UFOs. Unasked: where is the crashed
UFO?
John Harney picked the Gatchellville case as one of three reports in the
UFO literature which seemed of real good quality, yet still remained
unexplained as of his writing ("In Search of Real UFOs," Magonia, June,
1994). While he didn’t think it was extraterrestrial, he wondered if ball
lightning might have been involved because of the large amount of energy
released when the object hit the lawn.
Hendry’s Handbook and Harney’s hurrah forget to mention there was a
retrieval in the case. In a short article in the International UFO Reporter
entitled "Case Wrap-Up: Close Out on the Gatchellville, PA II" it was
revealed that analysis was done on some foil-like strips that investigators
retrieved from a tree across the road from the burned patch. They turned
out to be Mylar. Since Mylar does not release much energy when it burns,
investigators concluded, "It is likely they were unrelated."
Guess again. Mylar is a common material used in kites. Kites have a bad
habit of running into trees. As for the red light, it was likely either a
flare or a lantern surrounded by red crepe paper.
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