Indian Point nuclear plant sighting (1984)

Indian Point nuclear plant sighting (1984)

Dates	14 June and 24 July 1984, about 10:15–10:30 p.m. (NICAP gives 24 June for the second)
Location	Indian Point nuclear complex, Buchanan, New York, just south of Peekskill on the Hudson
Witnesses	New York Power Authority security officers (up to 12 in some accounts) and Con Edison staff; Peekskill police
Described	A boomerang or V of bright lights with a dark mass behind, hovering near Reactor No. 3
Reported by	Philip Imbrogno; Night Siege (1987), chapter 11
Official response	NRC: no record; Power Authority: guards did not arm themselves; police and plant pointed to light aircraft
Date	24 July 1984
Topics	Nuclear & missile sites (topic)
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 97
Year	1984 in UFO history
Timeline	1984 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

During the 1983–1984 Hudson Valley UFO wave, security guards at the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River near Peekskill, New York, reportedly watched a large boomerang-shaped object hover near one of the reactors.^[1][5] The account comes from the researcher Philip Imbrogno. No official incident report has been made public, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it had no record of the sighting.^[1][2][9]

The reports

Imbrogno said guards at the plant saw an object over the site on 14 June and on 24 July 1984, the latter lasting 10 to 15 minutes.^[1] The fullest account appears in chapter 11 of Night Siege (1987) by Imbrogno, J. Allen Hynek and Bob Pratt. It is based on guards interviewed under pseudonyms in a Peekskill restaurant on 12 September 1984 and again on 4 or 5 October.^[2][5][9]

In the book, the guard "Carl", a former state trooper, described the first sighting:^[5]

• The lights. On outside patrol at Unit 3 at about 10:15 p.m. on 14 June, he saw white-yellow lights approach from the northeast. Ten or more were in a boomerang, at least ten times as bright as the plant's security lights.
• The hover. The object hovered for about fifteen minutes near a gate, dwarfing an 80-foot building. He put it at least 300 feet across.
• The dark mass. A passing plane's lights vanished behind it and reappeared, which convinced him there was a solid mass behind the lights.
• Other witnesses. About ten people at the neighbouring Con Edison plant watched as well.
• Not planes. Winds were gusting to 25 knots, and he said no formation of small planes could have held still: "No way was this a formation of planes."

The second sighting, on 24 July, was the more dramatic:^[5][9]

• The lights. They changed from yellow to white to blue, with a blinking red light at the rear.
• The size. Carl said he got within 500 feet. The object was "the size of three football fields", moving slowly enough to walk beside, and came "within thirty feet of the reactor", the only one operating.
• On camera. An officer at the security console, "Milton", said he had to pan a camera atop a 95-foot pole almost 180 degrees to take in the whole object. He judged it larger than a C-5A.
• "Portals". A third officer described two dark "hollow spheres" underneath that looked like portals.
• Shotguns. Guards were issued shotguns and waited for the order to fire.

Imbrogno's later articles added further claims, which he attributed to the guard he called "Jeff":^[5][9]

• The systems. As the object neared the east gate, the motion sensors and alarm system failed, and the computer controlling security and communications shut down.
• Camp Smith. The commander called the National Guard's Camp Smith, asking for identification and then an armed helicopter. The object left before any action.
• The next day. The guards were told that "nothing happened". Radio and video tapes were said no longer to exist.
• Afterwards. Imbrogno described a security shakeup involving the NRC. He also reported later claims of government observers on the roof, a mysterious "power drain" and a reactor crack, none of them documented.

The number of witnesses and the details differ between versions.^[1][2] Imbrogno's figures range from a 300-foot object to 900 feet, and from three or five guards to twelve.^[1][5][9] In one article he dates the first sighting to 14 July rather than 14 June.^[9] NICAP's catalogue gives the main date as 24 June 1984 and describes a diamond-shaped object about 450 feet long.^[7]

Outside the plant

Imbrogno said Peekskill police received many calls that night. Sgt. Karl Hoffman of the Peekskill police reported seeing a dozen white lights in a V moving slowly toward the plant.^[7][9] The same evening, 24 July, Bob Pozzuoli in Brewster, about twenty miles east, videotaped rotating lights. Imbrogno took this to be the same object.^[1][9] A commenter on a 2007 blog post about the case recalled seeing a similar silent, lit object pass slowly over Sing Sing prison.^[8]

The Hudson Valley wave

From 1982 to the mid-1980s many people in New York's Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties and in Connecticut reported huge, silent formations of lights shaped like a "V" or boomerang.^[1][3] State police traced many of these sightings to a group of pilots flying light aircraft in tight formation at night from Stormville Airport, though some witnesses dispute that this explains them all.^[1][3] The skeptic Brian Dunning argued that the "UFO" only ever appeared where and when the formation flyers were active.^[3] The New York Times covered the wave in August 1984.^[1][4]

Official response

Responses from the authorities:^[1][5][9]

• The NRC. A spokesman, Brian Norris, said the Commission had received a FOIA request from Imbrogno but had "no documentation of the sighting".
• The Power Authority. Its security coordinator, John Branciforte, said officers had not armed themselves with shotguns. He suggested Imbrogno "could possibly be making it up or he took what they gave him and stretched it out".
• The police. The Power Authority and Troop K of the state police said the sightings were Cessna 152s flown by pranksters from Stormville. Pilots used the plant as a "handy landmark".
• The plant's spokesman. Carl Patrick, according to the radio reporter Gerry Culliton, confirmed there "definitely were sightings". He said state police had arrested four Cessna pilots, but Imbrogno found no record of any arrest. Asked whether the guards had fired, Patrick reportedly said he could neither confirm nor deny it.

Press clippings about the sightings were later found in NRC files and released under the Freedom of Information Act.^[6] The NRC's copy of that coverage could not be read when this article was prepared. A separate NRC release to The Black Vault in 2017, covering UFO-related records since 1975, contains no Indian Point material. It does include a 2010 allegation from a former guard at the Cooper Nuclear Station in Nebraska. He said a triangular object with rotating lights had hovered over the protected area there in the late 1980s without being reported. The NRC passed the concern to the plant's operator and planned no further action.^[10]

Context

Imbrogno called Indian Point "the first case where a UFO was confirmed being over a Nuclear Reactor". That claim rests on unnamed guards and on his own reporting.^[9] The NRC grew out of the old Atomic Energy Commission, which had a role in early UFO investigations at nuclear sites. Reports of objects over nuclear power plants and weapons sites remain a concern for security officials, from Indian Point to drone incursions reported at the Palo Verde plant in Arizona in 2019.^[4][10]

People and topics

• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Hudson Valley — The New York region where a wave of boomerang sightings occurred in the 1980s.
• Night Siege — A 1987 book on the Hudson Valley sightings.
• Freedom of Information Act — The 1966 U.S. law that lets the public request government records.
• Department of Energy — The U.S. department that runs the nuclear weapons laboratories.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

• Hudson Valley sightings (28 June 1984) — Hudson Valley residents report a boomerang-shaped craft flying at treetop level.
• Groom Range land withdrawal (1984) (7 August 1984) — The Air Force admits it restricted public access to land near Area 51 without legal authority.

See every 1984 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “1984 Hudson Valley UFO sightings”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.