Youngstown, PA being encounter — 1917

John Boback reportedly saw an unusual object while walking beside the railway between Youngstown and Mount Braddock, Pennsylvania, in October 1917. He was seventeen at the time. In the later account, a saucer-shaped object was already resting in a field approximately thirty yards from the tracks. Some compilations give 12:30 p.m. and an exact October day, while the more conservative dating remains month and year. Boback described a vehicle roughly the size of an ordinary car, with a platform, rows of lights and a dome containing elongated windows. Figures or silhouettes were visible behind the windows, without identifiable facial features or a secure occupant count. After one or two minutes, the object reportedly rose gradually with a high-pitched sound and then departed. Hatch’s condensed version specifies an eastward acceleration. The source trail leads to Orvil Hartle’s self-published A Carbon Experiment in 1963, decades after the alleged observation, and then Vallée’s Magonia catalogue and Richard Hall’s historical survey. The account predates the term flying saucer as a claimed event, but its surviving description was recorded after that term became familiar. No contemporary photograph, independent witness or recovered material is established in the accessible record.