UFO craze comes to Rochester in the summer of '65

Maybe there was something in the water that summer, because according to many observers, there was definitely something in the air.

August 1965 saw a flurry of reported UFO sightings over Rochester. Unidentified Flying Objects were spotted over the city on the night of Aug. 3-4, and again on the night of August 10-11, and not just by amateur sky watchers.

Some of the UFOs, the Post-Bulletin reported, were “blinking multi-colored lights — red, blue, green and white.” That description, in fact, came from an Olmsted County Sheriff’s deputy, who spotted the UFO. “Two other deputies confirmed the sighting before the object, ‘flying very fast and high,’ disappeared in the direction of the Twin Cities,” the Post-Bulletin said. Yet another deputy on duty at the Olmsted County fairgrounds saw a UFO at about 2:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, a meteorologist working at the Rochester airport spotted a UFO at about 12:30 a.m., moving northward “at a good rate of speed.” Airport radar did not pick up the object, but radar in the Twin Cities tracked the UFO briefly before it made an abrupt disappearance.

“I’ve been watching the skies for years and never saw anything like it before,” the Rochester meteorologist told the newspaper.

A 14-year-old girl in southwest Rochester, a disposal plant worker in northwest Rochester, a woman in Marion Township, and other citizens phoned in reports of UFOs in the skies that night.

A week later, the UFO sightings started up again.

“About a dozen calls were received by the police department during the latest rash of UFO sightings,” the Post-Bulletin reported on Aug. 11, “including one from a squad car officer near the Eastwood Golf Course where the first sighting was made a few weeks ago.”

This time, the meteorologists at the airport saw nothing on radar. Lee Graham, Rochester assistant police chief, asked citizens to report their UFO sightings to the U.S. Air Force, rather than to local police.

This wave of UFO sightings was not merely a local phenomena that summer. According to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which tracked UFO reports, there were 887 UFO sightings nationwide in 1965. By comparison, there had been only 562 UFO reports in 1964, and a mere 399 in 1963.

Among the 1965 UFO reports to attract widespread attention was the so-called “Exeter Incident” on Sept. 3 in New Hampshire. There, an 18-year-old hitchhiker said he jumped in a ditch as a UFO with flashing red lights bore down on him. Police officers who went to the farm to investigate also saw the red lights of a hovering object.

The Air Force recorded increased numbers of UFO reports again in 1966 and 1967. But reports had decreased to only 146 in all of 1969, and Project Blue Book was terminated at the end of that year.

Investigations by the Air Force found that most reports of UFOs could be identified as balloons, satellites, airplanes, weather conditions or hoaxes. Of the 1965 sightings, for instance, only 16 could not be identified.

One of those that could be explained was a UFO sighted over Rochester on Aug. 4. It turned out to be a balloon launched by the General Mills Co. from an airport in Anoka.

As for the others, including the multi-colored lights racing across the night sky — maybe it really was only something in the water.

Thomas Weber is a former Post Bulletin reporter who enjoys writing about local history.