Erik Larsen

@Erik_Larsen

Fifty years ago, seeing something strange or unrecognizable in the night sky was taken with some modicum of seriousness.

Perhaps this was due to the national paranoia associated with the Cold War. On the contrary maybe it was a reflection of an optimistic zeitgeist. In the 1960s, humankind was at the dawn of a new era, one in which it would no longer be confined to the exploration of one world. This was a time when popular culture was capturing the imagination of a public coming to terms with the idea that we may neither be alone nor the oldest civilization in the universe.

For several weeks in the spring of 1966, there was a wave of UFO sightings across the United States that had made national headlines. The reports were coming from credible eyewitnesses – police officers and firefighters – in addition to ordinary citizens, who all calmly recalled their encounters with fantastic objects in the sky, while occasionally giving pause to express incredulity at their own experiences.

Later that year, in response to this rash of sightings, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite hosted a prime time special, “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?”

That September, “The Byrds” fantasized about such visits from the outer cosmos in the song, “Mr. Spaceman." And, in the fall television lineup that year, a little series called "Star Trek" premiered on NBC.

'UFO: Friend, Foe Or Fantasy'

“Michigan’s weird, blinking lights apparently have extended their appearances to Ohio and Wisconsin,” read an Associated Press dispatch from March 27, 1966. “As before there was no full explanation.”

In Washington, Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Michigan, who would be president a decade later, called for a congressional investigation into what was happening.

Many Michigan residents felt the number of incidents were “sufficient to justify some action by our government,” Ford said.

On the same day that Ford called for House and Senate committee hearings on the matter, some residents at the Jersey Shore were seeing something strange in the sky over northern Ocean County.

“Space creatures Shore bound? Four residents in Brick say they spotted UFO,” was the headline on the front page of the Press on March 28, 1966.

The previous day, Air Force veteran James Novello, 63, of Brick, watched a brightly-lit, lemon-shaped object seem to hover over his Breton Woods neighborhood on the Metedeconk River.

Novello, who had logged more than 6,000 flight hours in the Air Force, where he had served as a radar operator, told a Press reporter that the object looked to be about 100 feet in length and 70 feet wide, at about a distance of a 1½-miles away and at an altitude of 1,500 feet.

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His 13-year-old son, Raymond, had been the first in his family to see the object. The teen had awakened at about 4:30 in the morning on March 27 because of a bright light penetrating through the night sky. He watched it through his telescope before waking up his parents.

“I just don’t know what to say,” Novello told a Press reporter. “Based on our observations, we’re almost positive it couldn’t have been a balloon, an airplane or temperature inversion.”

The family even woke up a neighbor, Joan Clayton, to have a look and share in the experience.

All of them stood in bewilderment for more than an hour at what they were watching. At times, the object seemed to alter its shape and luminosity. They constantly checked with each other to make certain their eyes were not playing tricks on them. Clayton confirmed the account to a Press reporter at the time.

“We all saw it, we checked each other’s observations, and we know it’s incredible – but there it was,” Novello said, who telephoned the police.

The following day, officials at then-McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown confirmed they were investigating reports of a UFO over the Jersey Shore. An official at then-Lakehurst Naval Air Station said the base had launched two weather balloons that day, though neither one would have coincided with the time of the Brick sightings.

Meanwhile, the New Jersey State Police had received two other reports about the object from other eyewitnesses in Brick, who had seen the same thing at the same time as the Novellos and their neighbor.

“We get a lot of these reports, especially at this time of year when atmospheric conditions make them common, but we can readily explain 99 percent of them,” an Air Force spokesman told the Press. “This one, though, does not fit most quick explanations.”

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