Fishersville Virginia Landing Report (1964)

The report

On the evening of December 21, 1964, Horace Burns, a gunsmith from Harrisonburg, was driving on Route 250 near Staunton and Fishersville in Augusta County, Virginia, when his car engine stalled. He said a metallic object had crossed in front of him, and that he watched it come down in a field about 100 yards from the road. He described an upside-down, spinning-top shape roughly 125 feet wide and 80 to 90 feet high, with a bluish glow underneath and no visible doors, windows, landing gear, or occupants. After 60 to 90 seconds it gave off a whooshing sound and climbed straight up. WHSV reports that Burns kept quiet until a radio report about a UFO club at Eastern Mennonite College prompted him to contact WSVA's Jim Shipp.

Radiation claims and the Air Force inquiry

The case quickly drew attention because of radiation readings. An Eastern Mennonite professor, Ernest Gehman, reportedly measured more than 60,000 counts per minute with a Geiger counter at the site, a figure that appears in a 1964 UFO-group article and has never been independently verified. Project Blue Book sent Sgt. David Moody, one of its leading investigators, who used a survey meter on the site. The Black Vault's copy of the Blue Book file and secondary accounts describe elevated readings, and one UFO history source cites about 1.5 milliroentgens per hour on Burns's car door.

Moody questioned Burns several times and judged his account consistent. Blue Book director Maj. Hector Quintanilla also wrote to Burns, who reported no changes in his story. Quintanilla then recalled the investigators to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, citing an Ohio incident involving a UFO and an Air Force fighter; WHSV found no record of that incident.

Official conclusion and dispute

The final Blue Book assessment found no substantiated proof of a landing, noting that no other witnesses or physical evidence had turned up. It recommended that Burns undergo a psychiatric examination, but there is no record that the test took place. Blue Book also said no one else had seen anything that night. That claim is disputed: WHSV has reported that Kenneth Norton Jr., then 14, saw a cigar-shaped object near Staunton the same evening.

The Air Force's dismissal leaves several gaps. The Geiger counter figures rest on a single, unverified source. The psychiatric recommendation was never documented as carried out. And Blue Book logged roughly 50 sightings in the Shenandoah Valley between December 1964 and May 1965, suggesting a regional flap that the official summary did not discuss.

Assessment

The Fishersville report stands out because it was a formal investigation of a physical-landing claim, with radiation data and a credible-seeming witness, and it was closed without a conclusion that the event was a hoax. Skeptics can point to the lack of corroboration and the psychiatric recommendation; ufologists can point to the official file's own admission that the Air Force never explained the trace readings. The case is best classed as contested and unresolved.