Wakefield, New Hampshire's UFO Mystery

Mystery at Rocky Ridge Farm

Early in the morning of January 10, 1977, William McCarthy noticed something strange about his horse pond. He went out to investigate and found a perfectly round hole three feet in diameter in the center of the frozen pond; a pond with ice eighteen inches thick. There was about eight inches of slush around the hole which led him to believe that something had melted the ice. When he looked in, he saw what appeared to be a black box approximately one foot square. He went back to get a rake, and he tried to remove the strange box. He found that it was submerged in about three feet of mud at the bottom of the pond. Worrying that it was a satellite or debris from an aircraft, he called the police. This call was to be the start of a bizarre chain of events.

The police arrived followed by people from the Civil Defense and the National Guard. They used Geiger counters to measure the level of radiation at the site and came up with very high readings of four roentgens. William McCarthy was told to keep his horses and his family away from the pond. The family was told by State Assistant Attorney General Greg Smith not to mention the incident to anyone. Despite the plea for secrecy, by the afternoon, the press had arrived, along with the state police and eventually, staff from the Pentagon.

The Investigation into the Wakefield, NH UFO Incident

All airports within one hundred miles were checked, but no aircraft had reported losing anything. No meteors had been reported either. Around 2:00 a.m. William McCarthy saw three men by the pond. They were taking new readings, and these readings showed no abnormal signs of radiation. Not only had the radiation disappeared, but so had the black box. Witnesses claimed to have seen the National Guard remove the box from the pond, but none of the investigating departments would admit to removing the box. Another strange fact was that the ice did not reform over the hole. Nothing but slush would form, despite the frigid temperatures.

To close the case, the Governor's office made a statement that the original Geiger readings were false due to faulty equipment. Three professors explained the hole by using the space junk theory and Professor Alan L. Baker claimed it was a melt hole due to the unusually severe weather. But believers in the UFO theory say that it was obvious that the government wanted the case to fizzle.

Others, like John Oswald, were not satisfied with the government's theories. John Oswald was a field investigator for the Center for UFO Research in Evanston, IL and he came to Wakefield to investigate what he felt was a possible UFO landing. The perfectly round hole in the eighteen-inch-thick ice, the fact that the hole would not ice over, and the high Geiger counter readings all seemed to him to point to a UFO landing.

Oswald was joined by UFO expert Alan Hendry and his wife and they began a complete investigation of the site. They searched the woods for scorched vegetation and broken branches, but came up with nothing. Without being able to see the actual black box, nothing conclusive was discovered. The whole incident remains a mystery to this day.

Was This a UFO Landing in New Hampshire?

The incident at William McCarthy's frozen pond is still an unsolved mystery. Where did the black box go? Why were the McCarthy's told to keep the whole thing a secret? Why did the ice fail to freeze again over the hole? And were the initial readings really false or was it the result of a cover-up? These are questions that persist to this day. The fact remains that something strange happened on William McCarthy's horse pond in Wakefield, New Hampshire. Perhaps someday the mystery will be solved.