West Pittsburg, CA being encounter — May 20, 1977

Shortly before 11 p.m. on 20 May 1977, fourteen-year-olds Lennie Young, George Ferrera and Patrick Morrison were in a field near West Pittsburg’s railway tracks and the Suisun Bay marsh. They reported joined red lights with a blue light moving among them, followed by a rapid departure, return and nearby landing. All recalled square window-like lights, one larger than the others, but their descriptions of the object’s outline differed. Three figures then appeared between the boys and the object, approximately fifty to 150 feet away. Young described dark, smoke-like forms without discernible faces; Morrison recalled draped shapes moving as though linked; Ferrera described grey, eyeless, human-shaped forms with a stiff gait. They fled to Morrison’s home, where his mother called the sheriff. The plate preserves these indistinct forms rather than inventing detailed metallic robots. The Oakland Tribune interviewed investigators in 1978. Deputy Douglas Pendleton considered the boys genuinely frightened, and Richard Haines found their separately related accounts consistent. However, Haines found no independent witness, radar corroboration, landing marks or magnetic anomaly. James Harder likewise found no physical evidence; Allan Hendry considered it evenly uncertain. A credibility label therefore did not establish an alien encounter, and the possibility of a hoax or misperception remained open.