Gitchie Manitou Park unidentified-object report — July 5, 1976

At about 09:00 on 5 July 1976, brothers Andy Rygh, eight, and Joel, six, were playing in Gitchie Manitou Park, Iowa. They reportedly heard unusual noises, a grunt and a whistle, then saw a figure at least seven feet tall behind a bush roughly seventy feet away. Shiny blue material covered the visible part of a leg. As the sounds grew louder, they ran to their older brothers, Chris, eleven, and Tom, nine. The four boys subsequently reported a separate sighting: a pulsating luminous object emerged from behind a large tree about fifty yards away. Accounts compare it to a large haystack or describe it as domed. It reportedly hovered with a hum for approximately five seconds and then sped away. Small oak trees beneath its position were later said to have lost their leaves; the summary supplies no laboratory examination establishing the cause. Pat Miller of the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader is the investigator cited by HUMCAT 1976-55; the native ledger references 15 August 1976 newspaper coverage. Only the younger pair are described as seeing the tall figure, whereas all four saw the object. No source establishes that they watched an occupant board it. Any illustration combining both observations therefore compresses successive stages rather than showing one witnessed instant. The linked retrospective video places the boys’ episode earlier in the 1976 wave; the written chronology supplies 5 July.