Some forty years ago, sightings of unidentified flying objects zooming through the night air or hovering over rural roads kept Cecil County’s police agencies busy fielding many calls about strange, glowing aircraft.
The series of reports started in the late 1960s and continued into the early 1970s as people reported large silent objects with bright lights or flying saucer-like craft darting through the darkness.
One cold January night in 1971, an unsuspecting motorist driving down Old Field Point Road sighted an object without engines, windows, or markings gliding silently above the road ahead of his car. Suddenly the UFO stopped to hover over the road as another object met the first one. As soon the driver got to a telephone, he alerted the Elkton Police Department to the mysterious object floating silently on the southwest side of town. Patrolman Marshall Purner answered the complaint but never located the UFO.
Two years later, a rash of sightings had people abuzz as eyes scanned the night sky for mysterious sights. One of those observers, Rachel Gray of Bay View, called the state police after seeing big, bright yellow and red lights floating erratically through the darkness near Bay View. Troopers unable to explain the strange lights phoned the Andrews Air Force Base, which checked radar but found nothing to explain this sighting.
Eventually, the rash of calls about unidentified flying objects subsided. The police explained most of the UFO calls, finding helicopters, weather balloons, and other logical things as the source of the observations that baffled residents. But still, a few remained unexplained.
