Show notes
For over a century, Pennsylvania has been a hotspot for UFO encounters that baffle experts and leave witnesses questioning reality. From glowing discs in remote lakes to crafts that defy physics, the Keystone State’s skies are filled with the mysterious, paranormal, and extraterrestrial.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/PennsylvaniaUFOs
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ye247nxk
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Pennsylvania has always been a land of mysteries in the skies. It has become one of the most intriguing destinations for UFO sightings throughout the years, with tales that date back long before the term “flying saucer” was even coined. From glowing discs hovering over fields, to objects that break the laws of physics, the state’s history is filled with encounters that leave you wondering what might actually be out there. And these are not mere passing glimpses; these are encounters that can leave a witness profoundly shaken – altered for life. There’s the Carbondale incident, where strange lights in a lake sent people into a panic. There’s the experienced aviator who encountered something that decades in the cockpit could not explain. There are numerous accounts of silent craft and disc-shaped objects, eerie lights in the sky — occasions when the stars were blotted out. There are reports of the stopping of time, an encounter that had state troopers speechless, and even an extraterrestrial werewolf-like entity. From the earliest sightings in 1917 through more modern accounts, Pennsylvania’s connection to the UFO phenomenon is undeniable, if not unbelievable. What’s going on in the skies over the Keystone State? And why is it happening there in particular?
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:37.162 = Show Open
00:02:45.008 = Chapter 01: Lanterns and Lies: The Carbondale UFO Mystery
00:11:48.101 = Chapter 02: Eerie Lights in Erie ***
00:15:12.728 = Chapter 03: The Oil City Light Show
00:16:46.996 = Chapter 04: Saylor’s Lake, Silent Lights, and a Stunned State Trooper
00:18:09.833 = Chapter 05: A Tent, A Grandmother, And A Silent Visitor Overhead
00:20:02.281 = Chapter 06: The Wainwright’s Werewolf
00:25:33.631 = Chapter 07: The Black Circle In The Sky ***
00:27:55.349 = Chapter 08: Friday Night Lights In The Sky
00:30:36.853 = Chapter 09: Playing Chicken With An Experienced Pilot
00:32:40.481 = Chapter 10: Mind Probing and Time Stopping
00:35:41.135 = Chapter 11: The First Saucers
00:41:31.466 = Chapter 12: Why Pennsylvania? ***
00:44:16.924 = Show Close & Bloopers
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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SOURCES and RESOURCES:
UFOs in Pennsylvania: Encounters with Extraterrestrials in the Keystone State, Patty A. Wilson, ISBN 9780811 706483The Carbondale UFO Crash, 11-11-1974, The Reality, the Hoaxes and the Legend, M.J. Graeber https://www.ufocasebook.com/carbondalecrash1974.htmlHovered- Colored lights went out- sped away -left trail, National UFO Reporting Centerhttp://www.nuforc.org/webreports/068/S68976.htmlUFO Over Westline, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/032/S32964.htmlUFO Over Erie, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/019/S19817.htmlBright lights in the sky seperated by several miles, National UFO Reporting Centerhttp://www.nuforc.org/webreports/043/S43145.htmlWar of the Worlds Sighting, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/054/S54491.htmlVery large circular craft with engine problem, descends, stabilizes, restores engines and tests them, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/016/S16875.htmlOne larger white object & 2 smaller round white objects, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/048/S48591.htmlUFO Sighting Johnstown 1951, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/132/S132897.htmlBright Blue Object Sighting, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/035/S35223.htmlSix craft observed that brought people out of their homes to look up, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/043/S43006.html
The Discreetly Intriguing Carbondale Case – A Downed UFO In Pennsylvania, Marcus Lowth, UFO Insighthttps://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/cover-ups/carbondale-case-downed-ufo-pennsylvania
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Originally aired: February 24, 2025
Weird Darkness traces more than a century of unexplained encounters in the skies over Pennsylvania, from a glowing disc submerged in a Carbondale lake to a werewolf-faced figure tied to a silent craft, the apparent stopping of time outside New Kensington, and the geography researchers believe may explain why the Keystone State draws so many sightings.It opens with the Carbondale incident of November 1974, when teenagers Bill Lloyd, John Lloyd, and Bob Gillette watched a golden-white light streak from the direction of Salem Mountain and drop near the lake outside Russell Park. A disc-shaped glow moved beneath the water, the surface fizzed and turned a sickly green-yellow, and when Officers Barbero and Jacobina fired their weapons at it, the object appeared to dodge the shots. The boys overheard a police radio order to hold off the news media, watched a scuba diver surface screaming, and saw a crane and delivery truck brought to the water's edge under the eye of Police Chief Francis Dottle — only for divers to later produce a single old railroad worker's lantern and declare the whole thing a hoax. Matt Graeber of the UFO Report and Information Center in Philadelphia arrived at five in the morning to find a crowd of between fifteen hundred and three thousand people ringing the lake.From there the episode moves to February 1975 in Simpson, where a driver on Route 171 joined other motorists pulled over to watch red and green lights hover before a white beam appeared and the object shot off faster than a fighter jet. That June, two friends fishing at Red Bank near the Allegheny Reservoir tracked a craft that stopped dead in midair and hovered for roughly an hour, then heard KDKA radio report at six-thirty that morning that a UFO had crashed into an eastern Pennsylvania lake and the National Guard had it surrounded, before the story disappeared from every outlet. Near Erie around the same stretch, two motorists stopped to study a silent disc about eighty feet across hanging a thousand feet up, ringed with red, yellow, blue, and green lights, and afterward never spoke of it to each other again.Next comes Oil City on November 1, 1974, where CB radio chatter about lights near the Vocational Technical Center across from Oil City High School drew a group of brothers out to look. They found three or four bright lights spread miles apart, moving in geometric formations no aircraft could manage, performing for nearly two hours in front of hundreds of onlookers.The account then shifts to Saylor's Lake in Monroe County on the evening of March 1, 1973, where lights began darting fifteen hundred feet above the water around seven-thirty, shifting between white, red, and blue. State Trooper Jeffrey Hontz, sent to investigate, later told the press the display looked like Christmas trees flying in the air. Witnesses counted roughly forty separate lights, all of them silent at an altitude where planes or helicopters would have roared, and the spectacle lasted until just before eleven.That summer of 1973 in Erie, a teenager sleeping in a backyard tent to escape the heat saw a red, star-like object cross the sky with apparent purpose and ran inside to fetch his grandmother. By the time the two returned, the sky had filled with colored star-like objects moving at impossible angles and near-collisions before they winked out of existence rather than flying away, and the grandmother, though she had watched the whole half-hour, afterward refused to discuss any of it.The most frightening encounter belongs to Bensalem on August 27, 1973, when Alan and Elsie Wainwright saw a boomerang-shaped craft glide silently over their home, halt overhead, and d
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