By Charles Culbertson/contributor

mail@stauntonhistory.com

When Grottoes gunsmith Horace Burns spotted an unidentified flying object the afternoon of Dec. 21, 1964, on U.S. 250 three miles east of Staunton, he had no intention of telling anyone about it, other than his wife.

But she convinced him to contact UFO Investigators, an extra-curricular club at Eastern Mennonite College, which eventually led to an investigation by the U.S. Air Force.

On Jan. 12, 1965, Technical Sgt. David Moody and Staff Sgt. Harold Jones of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base traveled to the Shenandoah Valley to interview Burns and to investigate the meadow in which Burns said a huge, metallic object had landed.

Several weeks before the Air Force got involved, Ernest Gehman — a professor at EMC and member of UFO Investigators — had used a Geiger counter at the scene, and had recorded extraordinarily high levels of radioactivity.

His readings were witnessed by two engineers from the Waynesboro DuPont plant.

Sgts. Moody and Jones were accompanied to the site by Burns; Gehman; the student president of UFO Investigators; and Dallas Kersey, a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Moody, operating a Beta-Gamma Survey Meter, began to sweep the now snow-covered area for radioactivity.

"Twice, when the needle started to rise, he ejaculated, 'Uh!,' quickly made some adjustment on his Survey Meter which caused the needle to return to zero, and then said, 'See, there's no radiation here,'" wrote Gehman in a magazine article about the incident.

According to Gehman, Moody did the same thing a fourth time when the meter's needle shot off the dial. Despite this, Gehman noted in his article that he and Burns were initially heartened by the investigation:

"The sergeants both seemed sufficiently impressed by all the facts they observed and heard related, and they said several times that of the 532 UFOs reported in 1964 and investigated by the Air Force (of which 16 were classified as unidentified or unexplained) this could well result in being the 17th for 1964."

But it was with "considerable surprise and dismay" that Gehman and Burns, when they received their copy of the sergeants' three-page report dated Jan. 27, learned the Air Force had decided there had been no UFO sighting or landing. The report's final paragraph concluded:

"It is believed that a vehicle of this size would be observed by additional witnesses at the time and location of the reported event. There were no additional witnesses. There was no confirmation of radioactivity in the area. Grass and weeds had not been depressed.

There was a total lack of any indication that a vehicle had landed in the field. Investigation... and subsequent analysis of the data collected fails to reveal any evidence of an alleged landing."

Gehman was scathing in his article for the January 1966 edition of "Flying Saucers."

"Apparently, the honest, straightforward, detailed testimony by Horace Burns... and my testimony, supported by two technically experienced witnesses, as to the radioactivity of the landing site of the UFO, do not constitute evidence as far as the Air Force is concerned."

He blasted them for not reporting that his original, off-the-dial Geiger counter readings had been witnessed by the two DuPont engineers; he charged them with juggling facts, noting that the grass in the field could not have shown any depressions because it had been mowed since Burns' sighting; he lambasted them for using an improper instrument with which to gauge radioactivity.

"While on the whole we have a very high regard for the United States Air Force," wrote Gehman, "yet we cannot help feeling that the Aerial Phenomena Section... would do well to seriously overhaul its principles, its methodology and some of its personnel."