Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2024
The Saucer Files
A Look at Late 1953 Saucer Events
by: Rick Hilberg
11/25/53
A " huge, golden flying saucer" was reported hovering in the vicinity of Toronto, Canada that afternoon. Norman Giddings, Englehart Acres in Scarboro reported sighting the giant disk-shaped object at just after 2:00 p.m. while driving along the Hingston Road from Ajax to Toronto.
A salesman, he described the thing as "much bigger than a plane," and said "I had time to make definitely sure it wasn't the sun shining on some kind of object. It was glowing with its own light."
(late November 1953)
A fluffy blanket, dead white, almost ephemeral in its delicacy, and apparently electrically charged, may have been California’s first physical contact in the San Fernando Valley with possible visitors from outer space. The white substance was said to have streamed like a lacy ribbon from a strange flying craft that sped over the area at a high speed.
It's a weird story, awesome in connotations that accompany all encounters with the unknown, that is told - and backed up with evidence - by residents over a wide area in the vicinity of White Oak Avenue and Haynes Street in the city of San Fernando, west of Birmingham Junior High School. And the story becomes even more strange, more in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe, when these residents pointed to trees, telephone wires, fence posts and television antennas that still held clinging bits of the webby stuff after the initial encounter with the strange that November day.
Could it have been nothing more than spider webs? Observers said no. Others, familiar with plant fungi, discounted the possibility thar the mystery substance was mealy bug fluff. One day that November, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Dangelo, who lived near the corner of White Oak and Haynes, four men who resided on White Oak, a couple of next-door neighbors of the Dangelo’s and a bakery truck driver arriving in the area making his rounds, saw the vaporous blanket settle over the neighborhood.
"We were watching three jet planes," Mrs. Dangelo recalled." Then, behind them, we saw a huge silvery ball. We thought maybe it was a tow target, or something, connected to one of the jets. But then the jets just peeled off and landed. The silvery ball kept flying. It moved up and down, and even sideways. Finally, a long streamer of white stuff - almost like a vapor trail - spewed out of its back end. It detached itself from the ball and began settling to earth. It spread out, stringy, sort of, like white wool being shredded, and it dropped down all over the neighborhood like cobwebs. Wires running to our homes turned white. They still sparkle at night, some three months later." The bakery truck driver, Bob Tilt, rolled into the area just about that time. "I began noticing white stuff, like spider webs. It was everywhere, all over my windshield," he stated. "I didn't see any of it in other neighborhoods that day. In fact, I've never seen anything like it before or since."
Although none of the witnesses reported the incident to newspapers at the time, word got around. One family's telephone rang so constantly their two small children couldn't sleep, they said. They had the phone disconnected. They called the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank. In the words of one woman, "An engineer was sent out to see us. He was young and cocky, and approached us with a very sneering attitude. When he left, with a handful of the white stuff, he was silent and bug-eyed. The next day an engineer from North American Aviation, and on the third day one from Douglas. They've never told us what they learned, but we've heard the stuff could not be analyzed." Soon, residents became fearful that the substance might be radioactive, and had people washing everything that came in contact with the stuff. The material was generally described looking like finely shredded wool, or spun glass. Held between the fingers for a few moments, it dissolved into nothing. It also seemed to have static qualities and seemed to "jump" from a bush or tree and cling to one's hair.
Reaction throughout the neighborhood was mixed. Some showed no particular interest in it while others were convinced it came from some sort of alien flying craft.
