I sit here to tell you about this UFO that landed in Carbondale on November 9th, 1974.

Well, we've seen a big bright light.

It looked like a star.

That's what we thought it was first, a falling star.

When we looked in the water, we see it glowing.

We were visiting relatives about four blocks from Russell Park, and when we were getting in the car, we looked up in the sky and we saw it looked like a tube with like green, red, green lights on it.

My mom, I remember saying, that doesn't look like an airplane.

We were playing back here, first of all, when it came out of the sky.

So we seen it buzz out of the sky and come down and hit the pond.

The pond was glowing.

Something did come out of the sky, and it's a question of what came out of the sky.

Everybody seems to have their own version of the story.

I'm from WVIA-FM.

Are you from Carbondale?

Yes, I am.

Is this pretty exciting thing to happen to this town?

Nothing else ever happens in Carbondale.

Doesn't it?

Do you think they'll remember this for a long time to come?

They'll be talking about it for a while.

The landing of this UFO took place in the early evening on Saturday, November 9th, 1974 in Carbondale.

The five principal people involved in seeing it were five young people who were on the ground in the Russell Park area.

The glow, when we first seen the glow, it was out in the middle of the pond.

Then we got some friends and it came all the way in towards shore.

These kids were saying it was bright.

It landed in the park.

It splashed into this pond by Russell Park, and they came to the police department to report what they had seen.

You called the Carbondale Police Department.

Yeah.

And what did you say?

We called them before, and they didn't come up.

They thought we were on dope or something.

They didn't believe us.

When the police arrived and blessed their hearts, the police started shooting into the pond in this kind of sort of wider, wild west kind of thing.

On the following morning at dawn, there were a thousand people in Russell Park.

My dad took us back here to see what was going on, and we got as far as the football field, which is inside Russell Park, and then everything started to get roped off and nobody was allowed to come in.

Then the experts began to arrive.

There were UFO people and FBI people and federal government people.

By noon on Sunday, there were 10,000 people up there.

They called in a scuba diver to go into the pond, look around and see what was going on.

So the official story by police became that it was a hoax, that a group of teenagers threw a lantern into the pond.

Those of you who are at the scene have gathered by now that we've UFO sighting is anything other than what appears to be a hoax.

The flashlight was found by scuba divers, and we have every reason to believe this was the object which caused the concern.

Oh, we got it.

Here's the lantern.

The lantern, that one, you know, for me is almost like that was the best, that was the best cover-up story that you could come up with.

People across the Carbondale area, even into Wayne County, reported seeing something, a light, fly across the sky that night.

Many other people saw it.

I think this was part of an organized cover-up.

Don't mess with the evidence.

We want to see what it is.

So we need a diversionary object.

The teenager identified as throwing a lantern in the water was later identified as Carbondale native Bobby Gillette.

Bobby Gillette's been from Carbondale his whole life.

So in 99, he did say that he threw the lantern into the water, and then years later Bobby said that he didn't throw the lantern into the water.

But there was something else in the water beside the lantern.

Spectators at Russell Park reported seeing something removed from the pond on a flatbed truck the day before the lantern was found.

They came in with a flatbed truck.

Everybody saw something leave on a flatbed.

Lots of people have said to me over the years, Robert, I saw this flatbed truck arrive.

And whatever the object was, was taken out of here on a flatbed with a tarp over it.

So you really couldn't see it.

They got a large object, they got it out of the pond, they wrapped it in black plastic, and they put it on the flatbed trailer, and the flatbed trailer drove out of the Russell Park area.

We see the flatbed truck coming down the road.

Yes, we did.

With a big tarp over the top of it.

Sometimes I feel like when a rumor gets started, everyone starts to believe it.

Do you think it was something like that, or was there an actual flatbed truck?

Because people's memories are so specific, and they're all exactly the same, the route that the truck took, the color of the tarp, I think is really, really interesting.

And it matches up to people's descriptions from that time.

There weren't any splash marks, there weren't any impressions on the ground where it landed, there weren't any trees down from it going through the trees, and then nobody actually saw it coming out of the water.

I did get a phone call from the photographer that was here that night though, which has been pretty amazing.

So I'm meeting with him, he has some information that he wants to share that he's been waiting 50 years to talk about, and some classified, that was the word that he used, photographs that he took that night.

I'd love to find a first responder, but if this guy was there, maybe he's the one.

So we are going to talk to Jerome Gillott.

He was a photographer on November 9th, 1974, and he took a photograph of the glowing pond on Saturday night.

So he has not talked about this for 50 years.

This is the 35 millimeter camera that I used to take the pictures up at the pond that night.

My name is Jerome Gillott.

I took the photos of the glow in the pond that night, on Saturday evening, and I'm also was on the recovery team.

It started on just a normal Saturday, you know, in Carbondale.

A call came in to the police department that they saw something up at the pond.

So I went up there, and sure enough, there was the glow in the pond.

I took a couple pictures.

I put my, set my tripod up, and these were these were time exposures.

Conspiracy theories came out that, you know, it's a cover-up, it's this, that, and the other thing.

I didn't see any flatbed trucks or anything that everybody was saying.

What I did hear is that they were taking a piece of breaker equipment out on a flatbed truck, and you know, that's what it was.

So funny enough, we do get people who are very interested in it.

I don't call them weird.

I call them curious, because they're not weird in my world.

As we have the aliens around town, you know, wooden aliens, people are jumping on boards, they're having a lot of fun with it.

Oh, look at that.

Look at all these aliens.

Wow, this really amazing, special thing happened here.

Why aren't we talking about it, you know, and celebrating it?

This is part of our history.

Like, let's try to figure out a way to kind of tell that story.

Carbondale's not just a sleepy little coal town.

Carbondale is where big things happen.

I do not believe that it was a lantern.

I think it was some kind of cover - up.

I've heard rumors over the years that it was a Russian satellite.

You know, I'm not really buying that it was from outer space, but I do think it was something the government was trying to cover up.

I personally think part of what it was is it was space, space garbage, in effect, a satellite falling apart.

We think it was a meteor, right?

Or a Russian satellite, something like that.

I don't think it was an alien, to be honest.

We don't think it was a lantern, what they claimed it to be.

What do you believe happened?

I, you know, I know that there was something that came from outer space, so I tend to be one of the quirky ones.

Anything's possible in my world.

So, you know, and if it was just a meteor, why didn't somebody just say it was just a meteor?

Why did they just say that?

I want to believe it was a UFO, but I don't know, you know?

And I think, like I said before, I think that that's kind of the fun of it, is we're not sure.

So we don't know.

Believing something that is bigger than us, I think that that's really special, and how special for us that it happened here.

But it's interesting on what it is, and that's why always over the years it's been, you know, just a memorable thing.

It's been a milestone in my life, you know?

You know, maybe one day, you know, it will happen, but it's not going to be like the day the earth stood still.

Fifty years later, and the mystery still hasn't been solved, or maybe it was.

We'll likely never know, but for one brief moment in time, all of Carbondale stood still together.

Let's open the case back up, the Carbondale cover up.