On Saturday Aug. 10th, 1963 I led a team of NICAP investigators from our hometown of Vincennes, Indiana to southern Illinois, to investigate a rash of sightings. Our goal was to investigate, as well as possible in one evening, the Ronnie Austin case and the Uphoff/Hill case. We had contacted the sheriff;'s office in advance and they had arranged for the two men, Chauncey Uphoff and Mike Hill to be interrogated first. After that we had to go out to the Austin home in an attempt to interrogate him. Jim Catt and Phil Studler accompanied me on this trip and we had taken a reel-to-reel tape recorder to document the interview. At first the witnesses didn't want to be taped, but I convinced them that we were only using the recording to produce a report and that our intentions were honorable. Besides, these two men had already been interviewed in the local newspapers..

The incident had occurred on August 7 at around 8:45 pm and it lasted until about 9:10 pm.  Chauncey (Allan) Uphoff, a noted S. Illinois farmer, and Mike Hill, operator of a local cleaning establishment, were sitting out in the former's back yard talking. The farm is located four miles east of Fairfield on highway 15. Mr. Uphoff's dogs started barking, interrupting their conversation. Chan (Chauncey) went over and "told them to quiet down" and returned to his seat. As they picked up the conversation where they had left off, the dogs "started in again", for no apparent reason. "Mike", he said, "they never do do that". He went over and quieted them down again. Mike then called Chan's attention to a very strange object in the sky, in the general direction the dogs were barking. 

Again, the object was first sighted at 8:45 P.M. in the general direction of south-west. At first it was stationary, then it started moving very slowly east...along the railroad tracks. One must realize that sightings had been occurring in the region, beginning with the Austin car chase of August 4th. and there had been about 30 sightings in a short period. Mr. Uphoff ran inside the house to call the police. When he returned, Mike told him another object was coming. This object was different. It appeared somewhat like a jet or a satellite. This object was going from SE to NW and climbing all the time. The orange diamond shaped object started closing in on the other object (paths were going to intersect), and when they got close, its light went out. The white object held its course to the NW. 

Both of the witnesses were wondering what had happened to the diamond. The white object was now fading in the north-west, when Mike turned around and shouted, 'There it is. There it is", and the object was again visible. It was exactly "where they left it" between the two tree branches, except that now it was a dim gray color. All this time there was no sound from the diamond, and the estimated altitude of the object was approximately a thousand feet or more. What followed then is interesting. With lightning-like speed the diamond came right at them, changing from the previous gray color to the orange to a now brilliant blue-white. It made a swooping U-turn, circling to the south and headed southeast toward Grayville. 

When the object started the U-turn it tilted on edge, exhibiting a tail-like protrusion. The witnesses described it as "more like a fluid dripping" rather than an actual part of the object. The "tail" appeared on the bottom edge of the tilted diamond. Neither of the witnesses could describe the object's exact shape or appearance when it was coming toward them. The maneuver was too fast. All they could say was that at that point it looked something like a bright, oblong and tilted light.

The witnesses would described the object as being very large, much much bigger than the moon. Uphoff stated in the taped interview that, on close approach, you couldn't cover it all up with your hand at arm's length. Press reports described the UFO as being "cross-shaped, but these witnesses described the UFO a little differently and as being "a kind of orange". (They pointed to our color chart the number 7 which was a yellowish orange). They described the object as diamond shaped, "like a big kite"... "like a baseball diamond turned sideways". And according to Chan Uphoff, the object was three-dimensional; "it had depth to it". 

Uphoff: "That had to be controlled; had to be maneuverable, boy. It wasn't floating." 

Neither witness could state that the other object had been a jet or a satellite. But they left it at that. Neither would state what they thought the diamond was. They only asked: "What do you think ?"

The object when first seen was a diamond shape. When it was turning and going SE, it was still a diamond shape, except when it was coming toward then. They just didn't know. And their idea of a "diamond" was best described as "a ball diamond viewed sideways" 

They heard, or thought they heard, a "drumming" sound when the other object went over. This could indicate a jet. But, the "diamond", according to these two witnesses, was so big and so close and so fast that it couldn't have been any type of jet aircraft.

The team from Project Blue Book had investigated the incident right before we did, and Colonel (Robert Friend) had asked them, "when the object was coming toward you, what did it look like?" They said they didn't know; it had happened so fast. But the description of a "ball diamond" they had given us sure bore a resemblance to a  disc with a pointed superstructure above and below, which stayed the same as it maneuvered toward them and disappeared toward Grayville.