October 2, 1958 — Delaware Water Gap nr. Stroudsburg, PA
Shortly after 5:00 p.m. Naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson and his wife Alma see a dull-gray object, shaped like a pickle with a flat bottom, fly erratically in loops over the Delaware Water Gap near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. It appears sometimes edge-on, other times oval or circular. It vanishes once but quickly reappears, continuing its rapid gyrations, and speeds away to the west after a 30-second performance. Sanderson writes: “The best way I can describe the motion is that somebody was flying a 1000-foot circular kite on a 500-foot lead in a 250-mile hurricane over Stroudsburg. The thing had just the erratic flipping, with sudden stops and sharp-angle turns, of a kite in a really rough updraft.” [Eberhart]
Record Card:
Report:
Sources:
Richard Hall, The UFO Evidence, p. 52;
“‘LIKE A KITE IN A HURRICANE’–Delaware Water Gap Sighting, October 2, 1958,” CSI News Letter, July 15, 1959;
Ivan T. Sanderson, Uninvited Visitors, Cowles, 1967, pp. 29-33;
Brad Sparks, Blue Books Unknowns Catalogue, Case 1346, p. 266;
NICAP, “Nickel- Shaped Object Flies Loops (Sanderson Case)”;
Wikipedia, “Ivan T. Sanderson”;