| INVESTIGATOR'S REPORT Fran Ridge, Investigator CASE: DALE LANDING; INDIANA, AUG. 14, 1964 On Monday, June 15, 1964, there was a small article in the Evansville Courier. A strange incident had occurred the previous night at a point two miles west of Dale, Indiana at around 9 p.m. Dale is about 60 miles SE of Vincennes, where I was living at the time. I was the Subcommittee Chairman for Indiana Unit No. 1, of NICAP. My team was pondering what to do when about three days later Ie received a letter from NICAP headquarters in Washington, requesting that we investigate since landing traces were continuing and this was the 15th received since April 24th. The article had said: A Spencer County youth had told police that on June 14th at 9:00 p.m. that he had been held frozen in his tracks as he watched a glowing object cavort in his backyard and then streak away. Puzzled authorities found a burned spot about the size of a dinner plate in the grass. They said that they had no idea what the object might have been. On June 20th, my NICAP subcommittee team was on the road, heading for Dale, Indiana and our first landing trace case. The three-man team included investigators Jim Catt and Phillip Studler. CLARIFICATIONS Englebrecht told us he had been alone watching TV in the dark but the lights had been on in the kitchen. His parents were visiting neighbors at a nearby farm. When the TV and the lights in the adjoining room went out, he saw the bright light outside on the west (back) side of the house and went out the (south) side door to check it out. He then walked around the right side of the house to the to the back and saw the object on the ground about 55' away. At that point it was as if he had run into a clothesline, a prickling sensation that held him back. The object was sharply defined, self luminous, about the size of a basketball. He estimated that after about 5 minutes the object took off with a whistling sound over the barn which was about 40 feet (farther) away and disappeared out of sight, leaving a smoldering scorch mark on the ground. When it departed, the object changed color from a bright red to a bluish purple to white to a brighter red. Several objects on the ground had been pulled toward the object when it had landed, A lawn mower had been moved about 10'; a garden hoe about 50'. There was a strong smell of sulfur in the air. We had found that Englebrecht had been in near shock and had experienced a loss of appetite and lost considerable body weight during the two week period immediately following the sighting. We had checked the site for background radiation with a Civil Defense V-700 geiger counter (with probe) and then a Model 117B scintillator (which was 60X's more sensitive than the geiger counter). Both instruments gave similar readings of about 0.02 mr/h. Nothing unusual was noted.. I do not have the date that William Powers visited with Englebrecht but it was prior to our investigation. I had not heard the results of the final analysis by the Air Force, but I was sure that CUFOS had a record of it since Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Mr. Powers were associates. On June 22, the soil samples which had been kept under refrigeration, were submitted to NICAP HQ along with a letter giving the descriptions and sample numbers, along with a grid that was drawn showing the location of the indentations, etc. Samples included dirt and grass in the small trace area. Photos of the site were also taken and sent to NICAP as well. A top-ranking scientist was to do the analysis. Later we found that there wasn't enough material in our samples to test. On July 7 Jim Catt, Joette Fields, Carolyn Roach, and myself made another trip to Dale to re-check the background radiation. While there we also checked out the Christney case. On June 28th, three girls had been chased by a white ball of light. Englebrecht knew the girls and took us to see them. This sighting was classed as a CE1, also occurred 10 miles south of Dale, and it happened in the wee hours of the morning. Fifteen minutes after midnight to be exact. The five-minute event frightened the girls. I think the presence of the women in our group eased the tension of the witnesses during our interview with them and they turned out to be very credible. The weather conditions were stormy with a very active electrical storm center during the interview. At 7:00 p.m. the readings at the Dale site were able to be taken safely and they were the same low numbers and of no concern. We also found that William Powers was supposed to have commented that as far as the "force-field" was concerned around the object, if the boy had walked further toward the repulsive force he would have been pulled toward it. At the time we couldn't substantiate this, but it made sense. Englebrecht had said it was like running into clothesline. Power's final report/comment was that someone had played a prank on the Englebrecht boy, using a piece of paper soaked in coal oil. According to Powers ball lighting was not considered since it never has been known to leave the ground. As of the 17th of July we were unable to get a signed form 97. The elder Englebrecht, hadn't wanted his son to sign anything earlier. It is documented, however, in the press reports and the AF investigation. It happened. CASE RE-OPENED In the mid-80's NICAP had been replaced by MUFON and I had gone from a field investigator to a state section director to state director. I was also an FI for the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). We had gone from FIs and a questionnaire and some notes to a field manual with many forms and instructions. Ray Fowler and I had created some of them. I had a team of FI's covering all 92 counties in Indiana and my office was equipped like the FBI. I now had a computer with a word processor and flatbed scanner. I even had my own copy machine. So while I was sending detailed, comprehensive reports on the sightings going on then, I was re-investigating some of the old NICAP cases I had investigated, to make sure they were the best they could be and archived for the future of ufology. The Englebrecht case was re-opened in 1988. CONCLUSIONS OF ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION Our conclusions were that 1) Ball lightning had been ruled out for two reasons. a) Due to the length of time observed, ball lightning events are measured in seconds, not minutes. b) Powers had commented that ball lightning stays on the ground. However, the colors of ball lightning can range from blue to orange to yellow and ball lightning has sometimes been accompanied by the smell of sulfur. This would seem to suggest BL as the cause, but the indentations at the landing point would not. This may have been ball lightning after all. We may never be sure. 2) I had also checked the moon position. On the night of the event, the moon was almost southeast of the landing site, azimuth 150 degrees. The object's position on the other hand was determined to be 261 degrees or almost due west. 3) Regardless of what previous "investigators" had said, this sighting was listed as UNKNOWN, CE2, with physiological effects, and the object appeared to be some type of probe. The Christney case involved a similar object which followed a car, further suggesting this probe-type object was a genuine UFO and not ball lightning. 4) There is a mention in a press clipping (which was incorrectly referenced later on) about a NICAP investigation by an "Alan Cast" but no NICAP communications mentions his name and we were the only authorized NICAP subcommittee in southern Indiana. Apparently a NICAP member took it upon himself to check out the case without proper authority and Richard Hall would have known about it if had been approved or if any information had been actually turned in. 5) A later investigation by Jeffrey Wilson and Charlie Kiesel was not an accurate description of the event as someone had changed the details from our original investigation in June of 1964 as evidence from NICAP letters easily prove. Interestingly, there was a news clipping about an alleged UFO trace case near Rome, Indiana, that appeared in the Indianapolis Star on the 28th of June titled "Mysterious Markings in Field Baffle Perry County Farm Family." The article stated: "A spaceship landing or freak act of nature could be responsible for the mysterious markings found in an alfalfa field on German Ridge. The markings were found in the field near Rome in southern Perry County yesterday afternoon on the farm of Mr. & Mrs. James E. Stowe. The "perfect circle" was 5' in diameter and in the center of it were three, more intensely burned circles arranged in a triangular shape as the spots had been made by three table legs. The small circles were perfect and about 3" in diameter." At the time of this incident none of the maps we had showed Rome or German Ridge. This case was never investigated. CASE SUBMITTED In 1988, the news clippings, the completed (but unsigned) questionnaires, numerous notes, photos, copies of the communications with NICAP were the basic items. Added to these were the Form 3 (E-M), Form 5 (Physiological Effects), Form 6 (Landing Trace), maps and other items we could find and submitted copies of the report to MUFON (HQ), then DDI Dan Wright (Deputy Director of Investigations), Robert Boyd (CUFOS Investigation Coordinator), and Dr. Willy Smith (UNICAT Project). The case was listed as CE2, UNKNOWN, but I don't believe now that the case should be cited as representative of the UFO phenomenon. FINAL NOTE Charles Englebrecht, 72, was a Marine Corp veteran of the Vietnam War where he valiantly served his country for 2 tours in the Northern IKOR, earning two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He was the proud author of a book written of his time in-country and afterward entitled, “The Guns Fell Silent and The War Began”. He passed away on March 10, 2019. ENDREP |