Close Encounters of the Muncie Kind: The Muncie UFO Mania of 1973
The 1973 Muncie UFO Sightings: Indiana’s Alien Mania“Muncie is the typical Midwestern small city, a very hometown feel, a crossroads of America. It”s a good place to live and raise a family,” says Karen Vincent, executive director of the Delaware County Historical Society.
At first glance, Muncie seems like another small Midwestern town. But looks can be deceiving.
“There are a lot of weird and eerie things that have gone on in Muncie for many years. I don’t think it was out of the ordinary to have people seeing UFOs here. It had happened before, but in 1973, it was a much bigger deal,” describes Vincent.
In 1973, something was happening in the skies above Muncie. What started as whispers turned into something much louder and much stranger. By October, these UFO sightings were so abundant that newspaper articles from the time read like a Hollywood script.
Sara McKinley, archivist at the Muncie Public Library, says, “Muncie went through a UFO mania. Throughout the month of October, there were hundreds of reports of UFO sightings in Muncie and Delaware County.”
“It just seemed to explode for about five or six days,” states Vincent.
“One in particular, there was a woman who reported that an object had landed in her backyard. Her neighbor reported hearing loud clicking noises at the same time as this occurrence,” McKinley explains. “A sheriff’s deputy came and spoke with her, and he said, ‘I don’t know what she saw, but she definitely saw something because she was frightened.’”
Vincent says, “It seems that the intersection of Wheeling and McGaillard was a hot spot, because there were several sightings in that area.”
“People Who Aren’t People”: The Strangest Reports
Just when it seemed strange enough, things got even weirder.
“There was supposedly a call to police from something that happened near Wheeling, where the person who reported it said, ‘There are people out here that aren’t people.’ That was always the really creepy quote that we found in the newspaper,” describes McKinley.
“She had seen something ‘silvery with scales,’ is what she said,” Vincent says. “So apparently the aliens landed.”
Panic ensued. Like any good mania, word spread like wildfire.
“100 calls to Muncie police. More calls to the sheriff’s department. Mostly it had to do with lights and moving objects. Maybe lights low to the ground. It seemed to have to do with a lot of colored lights,” Vincent explains.
By late October, the sightings had become part of the town’s identity, blurring the line between news and pop culture.
“There was a Halloween costume contest at the mall that October. A lot of people dressed in outer space outfits because of the whole UFO buzz that was going around Muncie,” McKinley describes. “We found an ad in the newspaper from November 9, 1973, from the Dairy Queen that said, ‘UFOs have landed at the north Dairy Queen! Come and get a Horrible Creature Sundae!’”
Rational Explanations and Debunking Attempts
The sightings continued for years, but the tone began to shift. More and more explanations began to emerge.
“All the way up through 1977, there were stories in the newspaper, but gradually more and more of them had rational explanations for what they could be. They found a piece of tinfoil high in a tree, and it was reflecting lights from neon signs from local businesses,” says McKinley. “My favorite one was that the UFO’s explanation was an airplane that was flying overhead with a banner behind it that was advertising steaks for a local lounge, and that was the UFO.”
Vincent states, “The reports that came out either concentrated on these helicopters or on weather balloons. So maybe, maybe not.”
The Close Encounters of the Third Kind Connection
While the skies eventually quieted, a new kind of light took over: the bright lights of Hollywood.
“The character that Richard Dreyfuss plays, Roy Neary [in Close Encounters of the Third Kind], part of it is set in Muncie. He has his UFO experience in Muncie in the film. The correlation between the two, because it’s only four years apart from when the UFO mania hit Muncie and when the film came out, there are theories that that’s why they chose Muncie as the location,” explains McKinley.
To some, they’re just stories, but for others, these moments are history worth preserving.
“All of these stories, whether it’s UFOs or unsolved mysteries, I think have an important place in our history and are something that people should know about and study because it is part of our community’s history. We should embrace that we have those stories here because they also make us unique,” McKinley concludes.
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The above video is a clip from Journey Indiana from WTIU. You can watch more segments and full episodes at pbs.org/show/journey-indiana/