The Wanaque NJ UFO Incident




UFOs Over The Wanaque Reservoir: The Roswell of the Ramapos January 11, 1966 started like any other mid-winter day in the small suburban town of Wanaque, NJ. The air was clear and cold, kids were enjoying the holiday vacation from school, and residents of the Passaic County borough went about their usual daily routines. Little did they know that before the day was over something would happen, something fantastic and unexplainable, that would change the lives of many of the townsfolk forever.

It all started in the early evening of that Tuesday night. It was about 6:30pm, and the winter sun was already long gone over the western horizon, past the great Wanaque reservoir, and behind the darkened Ramapo mountain range.

Wanaque Patrolman Joseph Cisco was in his cruiser when a call from the Pompton Lakes dispatcher came over his police radio. It was a report of a "glowing light, possibly a fire."

Then as if right out of a sci-fi movie Cisco heard the words: "People in Oakland, Ringwood, Paterson, Totowa, and Butler claim there's a flying saucer over the Wanaque." "I pulled into the sandpit, an open area to get my bearings," Cisco recalls. "There was a light that looked bigger than any of the stars, about the size of a softball or volleyball. It was a pulsating, white, stationary light changing to red. It stayed in the air; there was no noise. I was trying to figure out what it was." Wanaque Mayor Harry T. Wolfe, Councilmen Warren Hagstrom and Arthur Barton, and the Mayor's 14-year-old son Billy were on their way to oversee the burning of the borough's Christmas trees, when they heard the reports that something "very white, very bright, and much bigger than a star" was hovering over the Wanaque Reservoir.

They decided to pull into a sandpit near the Raymond Dam at the headworks to meet Officer Cisco and get a better look at the 'thing.' The Mayor's son Billy spotted the object at once, flying low and gliding "oddly" over the vast frozen lake "like a huge star." "But it didn't flicker," Billy told reporters the next day. "It was just a continuous light that changed from white to red to green and back to white." ]

"The phenomenon was terribly strange." Mayor Wolfe would later recall. He described the shape of the unidentified object as oval, and estimated it to be between two and nine feet in diameter. The next thing that officer Cisco remembers is his patrol car's radio "going bananas," as calls from all over a 20-mile radius flooded into the police headquarters. Cisco radioed Officer George Dykman, who was on patrol nearby. Just as Dykman received Cisco's message, two teenagers came running up to his patrol car frantically pointing at the sky and shouting "Look, look!"

At that moment Wanaque Civil Defense Director Bentley Spencer drove up with CD member Richard Vrooman. "The Police radios are all jammed up!" Spencer said excitedly. Dykman and Spencer gaped at the sky along with Michael Sloat, 16, and Peter Melegrae, 15. "What the heck is it?" Dykman wondered out loud. "Never seen anything like it in my life." Back at the sandpit Joseph Cisco's radio crackled as another unbelievable message came across the airwaves: "Something's burning a hole in the ice! Something with a bright light on it, going up and down!"

Then another transmission fought its way through the din: "Oh boy! Something just landed in front of the dam!" Spencer and reservoir employee Fred Steines raced to the top of the 1,500-foot long Raymond Dam where they described seeing "a bolt of light shoot down, as if attracted to the water...like a beam emitted from a porthole."

Patrolman Cisco, Mayor Wolfe and Town Councilmen Hagstrom and Barton climbed to the top of the dam to get a better look. "There was something up there that was awful bright." Hagstrom recalls. "We don't know what it was. We thought it was a helicopter, but we didn't hear a motor. It looked like a helicopter with big landing lights on. We got goose bumps all over when we saw where the hole was."

According to John Shuttle, another Councilman who witnessed the UFO, there was no doubt about it: "It was there." He said. "I saw it, a brilliant white object, two to three feet across, and its color - no, not color, shade - it kept changing."

January 12, 1966 One day after the initial sightings of the UFO, Patrolman Jack Wardlaw reported seeing a "bright white disk" floating in the vicinity of his home in the Stonetown section of Wanaque, just west of the reservoir. "It seemed like only a block away, above Lilly Mountain, maybe 1,000 feet up," Wardlaw said. "Don't ask me what it was. But I do know it wasn't any helicopter, plane, or comet. It shot laterally right and left. It stopped. It moved up straight. And then it moved down and disappeared in the direction of Ringwood to the north." Wardlaw described the object as "definitely disc-shaped and at certain angles, egg-shaped." Sgt. David Sisco said that he was on patrol at about 6:30 that evening when the UFO noiselessly hovered into view. "It glided, then streaked faster than a jet, " he told reporters, "and when it rose, it went straight up."

Reservoir guard and former Wanaque policeman Charles Theodora and Sisco went to the top of the dam to take a look at the bright light. "We looked across the water and saw a cylinder shaped object," Theodora remembers. "It was moving back and forth like a rocking chair motion. We were astonished." A few minutes later the object shot straight up into the night sky, until it was indistinguishable from the other stars. Theodora said that he didn't hear a sound while the light show was going on. "I didn't believe in UFO's, I thought they were a lot of bull. And then I saw it. It was a breathtaking sight; something I'll never forget." After the January 1966 sightings, radar was installed atop the reservoir dam.

To read more eyewitness accounts of UFO sightings in the Wanaque area, from 1966 right up to the present, see Weird NJ issue #15.

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Google+

Related : The Wanaque NJ UFO Incident

  • Scientists to Explore the Baltic Sea UFO AnomalySwedish scientists plan to explore a mystery ripped straight from the “The X-Files.”Rather than Mulder and Scully, this adventure features Swedish researchers Peter Lind ...
  • 5 Scariest Unexplained & Very Mysterious Phenomena!These are very scary and unexplained phenomena from around the world. One includes a car that drives itself across a railroad! Many believe that it is a ghost that is pu ...
  • 5 Strangest & Most Mysterious Pieces Of Footage Caught By NASAWe have all heard about NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration that covers all thing to do with space research and exploration. Well its no surprise tha ...
  • Has Atlantis Already Been Found?This week Chris and the fellas talk about lost cities and the history of man. They also discuss CCTV footage of a ghost, aliens having access to the White House and the ...
  • The Fire PhantomsBeyond Creepy looks at two cases involving fiery entities both from the late 1800s - The Fiery Spook of Burbank and the Fiery Phantom of Diamond Island. What do you thin ...
  • Couple claim they've filmed the ghost of a hooded monk (video)A ghost-hunting couple claim to have captured the image of a 'hooded monk' in a church with a satanic past. Paranormal investigator Dean Johnson 48, visited the abandone ...
  • Mysterious UFO filmed during US flight (video)A weird, "fist" shaped UFO was caught on video by a passenger on a flight from New York City to Houston on Dec. 19.The unidentified flying object does not appear to be a ...
  • 5 Real Alien EncountersThe ages old question remains - Are aliens real? Well, I implore you to ask yourself a different question about extraterrestrials - Not if aliens are real, but what do a ...
  • NJ Haunted House case heads to People's CourtTOMS RIVER — Don’t take the supernatural into your own hands, you take ‘em to court.A Toms River couple filed a lawsuit in April against their landlord for renting an al ...
  • UFO Filmed From Airplane Over South Korea (video)April 7, 2012   A classic, saucer-shaped UFO was filmed from the window of an airplane flying over Seoul, South Korea. What is it?As the passenger uses a ...
  • UFO sighting over CaliforniaI must admit I have honestly seen some odd lights in the sky, north of Los Angeles, in the high desert. Especially while working on film "Army of Darkness",  in Sto ...
  • Ghost reaches out to Santa in New JerseyWas Jersey City visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past? Or was Santa touched by an angel? In this photo taken at the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery, what a ...
  • Scientist At The Skinwalker RanchFor more than fifty years, the bizarre events at a remote Utah ranch have ranged from the perplexing to the wholly terrifying. Vanishing and mutilated cattle. Unidentifi ...
  • UFO buzzes Scotland home for five hours (video)An Aberdeenshire family were left terrified after a UFO invaded the skies above their home for nearly five hours.Grandmother Morag Ritchie, 50, awoke suddenly at 2am on ...
  • The Ramapo NJ house and the Legendary Ghost Story  Ramapo Saltbox Environmental Ed. Ctr  Ron Dupont North Jersey.com: Story by Ron DupontThere are many types of ghost stories: ghosts that haunt house ...