Southaven Park crash claim

Southaven Park crash claim

Date	24 November 1992
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic)
People	John Ford
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 115
Year	1992 in UFO history
Timeline	1992 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

The Southaven Park crash claim is an allegation that an alien spacecraft crashed in Southaven County Park, Shirley, on Long Island, New York, shortly after 7 p.m. on 24 November 1992.^[1][4] It was promoted by John Ford, chairman of the Long Island UFO Network (LIUFON). In May 1993 his group released a report, photos and a video it said showed the aftermath.^[4] Residents reported lights, rumbling and odd electrical effects that night, and the park was closed for several days afterwards. Park officials said it had been reserved for duck hunting.^[1][4] The story became tangled with Ford's later life: in June 1996 he was arrested over an alleged plot to poison Suffolk County officials with radium, whom he accused of helping cover up the crash. He was then found unfit to stand trial and committed to a psychiatric centre.^[1][3] No physical evidence of a crash has been verified.

The claim

• Ford's report. On 25 May 1993 the South Shore Press reported Ford's claims after what he called a six-month investigation.^[4]
  • Several motorists on Sunrise Highway said they thought they had seen a plane going down into the park.^[4]
  • Residents bordering the park reported loud rumbling and strange lights.^[4]
  • Ford said "eyewitness accounts have confirmed that a fire was reported immediately after", and that county and park police blocked the roads.^[4]
• Local effects. One anonymous resident said his house had power surges for five or six days and the phone kept ringing with no one on the line. He also said many military helicopters flew over the park and he could not get in.^[4] LIUFON also reported erased videotapes and malfunctioning digital clocks in the neighbourhood.^[1]
• The fire. Ford said local fire departments were turned back and the fire was handled by the federally run fire department of the nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory.^[1][4]
• Closure. Records showed the park was closed from 25 to 28 November. Park officials said this was because it had been reserved for duck hunting that week.^[4]
• The site. Ford's group got into the park a week later.^[4]
  • "We found an area that was burned out and some trees were bent over," he said, adding that a section "looked like it had been plowed over by machinery".^[4]
  • He said they measured higher than normal radiation, and that a metal fence line had "no magnetic reading", as if something had stripped its charge.^[4]
  • The director of MUFON's Suffolk chapter, who visited the site with them, said he saw nothing except some trees bent over at odd angles.^[1]
• The video. Ford later produced a poor-quality video from an anonymous source. It showed people examining a reddish, metallic object about four feet square that gave off white gas and a hissing sound, resembling dry ice.^[4]
  • Another shot appeared to show a person lifting a body near a tree, but could not be clearly made out.^[4]
  • A final shot showed three uniformed men placing a shiny sheet over something on the ground.^[4]
  • Ford said: "We believe that an extraterrestrial craft, with aliens, crashed that night in the park, and we are out to prove it."^[4]
• Shot down? In J. B. Michaels's book UFO Encounters, as summarised by Michael Shellenberger's 2024 timeline for Congress, Ford said he feared for his safety.^[10]
  • He claimed the craft was brought down by a plasma beam using "quark gluon" technology developed at Brookhaven.^[10]
  • He also claimed the Department of Energy had tested anti-UFO directed-energy weapons at Brookhaven and Los Alamos.^[10]
  • Shellenberger adds that a Brookhaven employee at the time said she saw a UFO near the laboratory around the time of the alleged crash.^[10]

John Ford and LIUFON

• Background. Ford studied philosophy at St John's University, graduating in 1971. He later worked at a court in Brooklyn and was active in Suffolk County's Conservative Party politics.^[3]
• LIUFON. He founded the Long Island UFO Network in spring 1988, with himself as chairman.^[6]
  • By January 1989 it claimed 100 members and 18 volunteers.^[6]
  • It ran a sighting hotline and co-sponsored a 1988 conference featuring Budd Hopkins.^[6]
  • Former members later said Ford "would jump at the opportunity for any light to be a UFO". He ignored an investigator's finding that booming "skyquakes" off the coast were Navy gunnery tests.^[6]
  • In September 1989 he offered researchers paid access to witnesses' confidential case files.^[6]
• Other claims. Ford believed Long Island was the centre of a vast UFO cover-up, involving sightings over Moriches Bay, alien bodies held at Brookhaven and a UFO behind the Sunrise Wildfire of 1995.^[3] A separate local story, promoted by other researchers, concerns a 1989 "shoot-down" over Moriches Bay.^[1][7] See Moriches Bay crash claim.

The radium plot

• Arrest. Ford, then 47, was arrested on the evening of 12 June 1996 with another man. A third man, a long-time Northrop Grumman employee, was charged with supplying radium.^[3]
• The charges. Prosecutors said Ford planned to put radium in the cars and food of Suffolk County Republican chairman John Powell, legislator Fred Towle, District Attorney James Catterson and public safety director Anthony Gazzola, hoping they would develop an incurable disease.^[3]
  • He was also accused of plotting to burn the county Republican headquarters.^[3]
  • A wired informant recorded Ford discussing radium "leaking five roentgens per hour" and suggesting mixing it into a target's food.^[3]
  • Police seized a large weapons collection from his barricaded home.^[3]
• Motive. Ford claimed local officials had helped cover up the Southaven crash.^[1] Reports at the time also described his political grudges against county Republicans.^[3]
• Ford's defence. Ford said he had only been joking and that the radium was for testing his Geiger counters. His lawyer noted that "if (Ford) wanted to kill these people he could have used any of the guns he owned".^[3] Brookhaven officials said the amount of radium seized would have taken decades to cause illness.^[3]
• Outcome. A judge ruled Ford unfit to stand trial, and he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward.^[1] As of 2025 he was still held at the Rockland County psychiatric centre.^[3] The other two men accepted plea deals.^[3] The earlier version of this article said "two other men were also charged", which is correct.

Assessment

• Evidence. No physical evidence of a crash has been verified. The story rests on LIUFON's claims, anonymous witnesses and an unattributed video.^[1][4] The park closure had a mundane official explanation.^[4]
• Folklore. The 1992 crash is still told in Long Island UFO lore, alongside the Moriches Bay "shoot-down" and the Montauk Project.^[1][2][7] The Wikipedia account of the park says it "has become famous" as the alleged crash site.^[2] The earlier version of this article said Newsday listed the story among Long Island's myths and legends in 2022; that is not covered in the sources read here.
• Context. Ford's case unfolded in the paranoid climate of the mid-1990s, after Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. Prosecutors later said that atmosphere made them act quickly.^[3]

People and topics

• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Department of Energy — The U.S. department that runs the nuclear weapons laboratories.
• John Ford — Founder of the Long Island UFO Network.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

• Vallée meets D'Amato on secret programs (1992) (22 May 1992) — Vallée writes he met Senate counsel Dick D'Amato about secret programs.
• British embassy report on triangles (1992) (22 December 1992) — The British embassy reports on the U.S. reaction to triangular UAP sightings.

See every 1992 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Southaven County Park”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.