Urban legends about government conspiracies and men in black may be suspect, but it is a fact that between the 1940’s and the 1960’s, the US Air Force investigated thousands of UFO reports from across the country and across the globe. Now for the first time, declassified documents from the Air Force’s storied Project Blue Book can be found in an easily accessible database.

The US Air Force investigated more than 40 UFO sightings over Columbus between 1948 and 1969. Many sightings were easily explained by investigators as obvious natural phenomena like meteors or planets. Others were simply aircraft or balloons or reflections of light off the clouds. Several could not be investigated further because of insufficient data or because witnesses did not provide enough information.

A few of the Columbus reports were more unusual, however, like the woman whose barking dog alerted her to a “web-like structure” revolving and hovering above her backyard on September 13th, 1966. The woman at first believed she may have seen an optical illusion, but Project Blue Book investigators told her “the fact that your dog barked would seem to rule out an optical illusion since it is most likely the dog’s attention was aroused by a sound (possibly beyond the range of human hearing) rather than a sight.”

In June of 1954, an Air National Guard lieutenant reported being followed by a bright light while flying over Columbus on a routine training mission.

“It chased me from Columbus to Dayton,” the lieutenant reported to Blue Book investigators. “I chased it back to Columbus. It left me there.”

Blue Book investigators determined the object could not have been another aircraft, weather balloon, or reflection inside the plane’s canopy, but suggested it could have been some sort of reflection phenomena. The case received a significant amount of attention from the government given the witness’ status as a military officer and trained pilot, as well as interest from the local media.

Another intriguing Columbus sighting occurred on August 22, 1966. On that day, a 6th grade teacher with Columbus City Schools spotted a “luminous white object” in a fixed position in the sky. As the teacher watched the object through binoculars, it broke into five separate pieces and streaked toward the West.

The case was investigated personally by Dr. J Allen Hynek, an astronomer and professor at Ohio State University, Northwestern University and the primary scientific advisor on Project Blue Book (as well as the inventor of the “Close Encounters” scale). Hynek felt there was something particularly unusual about this sighting and suggested the Air Force send a letter to the Columbus Dispatch and the Columbus Citizen, asking if anyone else in the city had seen the object. It is unclear from the documents whether or not the Air Force took Hynek’s advice, but the case remained unidentified.

Have you ever spotted a UFO in Central Ohio? Tell us about it in the comments below!