UAP Case Archive

Shapes / Cones and bells

Cones and bells

Acorns, bells, spinning tops and teardrops: shapes wide at one end and narrow at the other. One case dominates the group, a fireball over Pennsylvania in 1965 and the acorn some residents say they found in the woods afterward.

    Corona, Queens, 1981: a bell with flashing lights and a green beam shining down. Drawing for reference only.
    Each cone is one case, colored by status. Select one to open it below.

    Start with Kecksburg.

    The best-known cone case, and the clearest example of a story with two layers: a fireball that thousands of people saw, and an object on the ground that rests on later testimony.

    Just before five in the afternoon on December 9, 1965, a brilliant fireball crossed Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Near the village of Kecksburg, some residents said they saw something fall into the woods.

    Bill Bulebush, who said he was first to reach it, described a smoldering, sparking object about ten feet long, shaped like an acorn, with markings like hieroglyphics around its base. Volunteer firefighter James Romansky described a bronze acorn about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Residents said state police and soldiers closed the area, and one man who was ten at the time said he saw a flatbed truck leave with something that size on it. Officials said nothing was found.

    In 2003 journalist Leslie Kean sued NASA for its records. In 2007, after a court ordered a search, a NASA official testified that two boxes of records from that period were missing. Much of the detail about the acorn comes from interviews given decades later, beginning with Unsolved Mysteries in 1990.

    Two layers of evidence

    • DocumentedA fireball seen across six states and Ontario.
    • Ruled outCosmos 96, a Soviet probe. Air Force tracking showed its orbit had decayed earlier that day.
    • StudiedTwo trajectory studies put the fireball's end near the western end of Lake Erie and Windsor, Ontario, not Kecksburg.
    • OpenThe acorn in the woods, which rests on testimony gathered years later, and NASA's missing records.

    What the record shows.

    Twelve cases from 1945 to 1994. These patterns run through them.

    One case dominates.

    Kecksburg has more witnesses, more paperwork and more lore than every other entry here combined. It also has the widest gap between what is documented and what is remembered.

    The bell drifts into the saucer and back.

    At Warren in 1958, a bell flipped over and became a saucer. At Bethesda, a glowing object grew a funnel underneath. A domed disc seen from below can look like a bell, so the line between this page and Discs is soft.

    Spinning tops belong to the summer of 1952.

    Levelland and Marietta both reported tops, two cones joined at their bases, during that year's huge sighting wave.

    Light often pours out underneath.

    Sandoval's cone was lit in many colors, Tyringham's glowed, Corona's bell shot a green beam down, and Fleury's cone had colored stripes. Cash-Landrum, on the Diamonds page, had a cone of flame beneath it.

    Which end leads matters.

    Matador's pear moved small end first. Tucson's teardrop whirled on its axis, dropped, and went back up the way it came. The direction of travel is part of the description.

    Often told wrong.

    The cone cases carry some persistent myths. Here is what the record shows.

    The story you may have heardWhat the record shows
    Kecksburg's fireball was the Soviet probe Cosmos 96.
    Air Force tracking showed the probe's orbit had decayed earlier that day, and NASA has said it could not have been the object.
    The fireball came down at Kecksburg.
    Two trajectory studies published in 1967 put its end point near the western end of Lake Erie and Windsor, Ontario.
    The acorn statue in Kecksburg is based on witness drawings.
    It is a prop built for Unsolved Mysteries in 1990.
    Kecksburg was a Nazi bell, Die Glocke.
    Die Glocke first appeared in a Polish book in 2000, based on documents the author says he saw but cannot produce. No wartime record of it exists.
    Two boys found a crashed craft near the Trinity test site in 1945.
    The story was first told publicly around 2003, 58 years later. Nothing in the record from 1945 supports it, and the accounts have changed over time.

    All cone and bell cases.

    Listed oldest first. Each card notes what kind of evidence the case rests on.

      The bell that never was.

      Readers often arrive here looking for Die Glocke, the "Nazi bell" that some writers link to Kecksburg. It is not a historical device. Here is how the story was built.

      1945no record of any bell1965Kecksburg fireball1990prop acorn built for TV2000Polish book names Die Glocke2001popularized in English The bell was added to the story 35 years after Kecksburg.

      Left off this page.

      These are sometimes filed with cones and bells, but belong elsewhere.

      • Die GlockeNot a sighting, and not a historical device.
      • Cash-Landrum, 1980An upright diamond with a cone of flame beneath it, on the Diamonds page.
      • Kokomo, 1952A "top-shaped" object with a conning tower, filed as a disc in the Air Force record.