Case description
Before dawn on February 14, 1981, a seventeen-year-old married woman was babysitting a neighbour’s young son in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. At about 1:45 a.m., she went onto the enclosed front porch, hoping to see her husband leave for work. Instead, she noticed a silent object hovering at rooftop height, no more than about fifty feet away.
Three white lights marked its triangular outline. The nearest was brighter than the others, with a transparent window above it and two more windows wrapping around the sides. A weak white beam extended from underneath the object and slowly lengthened until it reached the street.
Through the front window she reported seeing two figures at a white instrument panel. She described large heads, unusual eyes and ears, and small openings where noses would ordinarily be. One figure appeared seated; the other was visible from the waist up, with a long neck, broad shoulders, pale skin and ordinary-looking arms. The panel carried groups of dark circular controls and devices resembling sliding controls. She watched the figures move their arms across it while the interior remained illuminated.
The young woman felt compelled to remain at the porch for approximately fifteen minutes. Eventually she returned to the living room, frightened. The contemporary newspaper account adds that the television buzzed and went black while the room’s only light also went out. She telephoned her parents to collect her and the child. Her father arrived at about 2:50 a.m., by which time the object was gone.
The case was reported to police and reached the Pennsylvania Center for UFO Research. Its editor, Diane Enion, supplied the account published in The Tribune-Democrat on April 17, 1981. Bob Gribble reproduced it in MUFON UFO Journal 274 in February 1991. Some later catalogues give 1988, but the contemporary report and the journal’s 1981 retrospective establish the earlier year.
