ParanoidSkeptic2
Active Member
In 1965, there was an alleged UFO sighting in Kecksburg Pennsylvania and it's been alleged that a reporter on the case, John Murphy, had found additional information, was making a radio documentary called "Object in the Woods", was contacted by government officials to not release it, and eventually was killed by them in 1968.
This was addressed in a 2015 video by a conspiracy/UFO channel and was told as if it's what happened, I'll link the video below and transcribe the bit
The video starts talking about Murphy at 8:18 (link is time-stamped)
I looked into it and the only source I could find that detailed anything like this was from a conspiracy website from 2011.
Excerpt from the 2014 edition of the article
Excerpt from the website
The whole section was removed as it was uncited and was exactly the same as the articles on the website.
I checked the citation and it gives an error 404, I looked on the wayback machine and it seems to be just directing to the Sci-Fi documentary The new Roswell: Kecksburg. The other is a CFI report which, again, is a dead link. But using the wayback machine I managed to get the report up. It says to read the 4th and 5th page for details. The report was written by Leslie Kean who has previously worked on different UFO related stories and it pretty much retells the same exact things as the other sources (Murphy making the documentary, being supressed, releasing a censored version and eventually being killed). I believe this report is from 2005 making this the earliest source of the John Murphy planning on creating the documentary.
I couldn't find anything else aside from the rehashing of the same story so I decided to look for the documentary and again I could not find anything, the top result was the Wikipedia article and the others were either unrelated or where the same word-for-word retelling of the same story.
At this point I started to even question if the person existed, apparently there is archive footage of him as he's credited in conspiracy documentary
In addition, apparently there have been records of the documentary as, according to this website, they know how the documentary started but again it's not sourced.
What do you guys think? Do you think the documentary existed and if it did, do you think it was suppressed?
This was addressed in a 2015 video by a conspiracy/UFO channel and was told as if it's what happened, I'll link the video below and transcribe the bit
The video starts talking about Murphy at 8:18 (link is time-stamped)
The video itself provides no sources of the description of this (or, for that matter, any) claim and when you click on their website to see if maybe they had the sources there, the website consists of just a conspiracy based podcast. The language in the video also seems so assertive of this being the case and seems dismissive of other explanations. In addition, I don't understand why the date 5th of December is mentioned when the incident occurred on the 9th of DecemberExternal Quote:Not everybody believed [a Russian satellite crashed in Pennsylvania]. In fact, John Murphy, the journalist we mentioned earlier, began making a documentary called "Object in the woods", where he took interviews from various people, gathered any evidence that he could find and tried to solve the mystery of things locals described as an acorn-shaped object or craft of some sort. At least that was until he was visited by two men in black suits who went into a back room with him and met for about 30 mins. And he still did come out with his documentary, but it removed everything else that he had been working on. And according to his wife he was pretty upset about it. His wife said that he became despondent, refused to ever talk about what went down in that conversation or what he saw that December 5th. In 1969 he was killed in an apparent hit and run while on vacation in California. After his death, his wife stated that he had been warned that there would be grave consequences If he ever produced evidence of that stuff he had seen that night, including a photograph he had of the object. Oddly enough, in project blue book case file on the Kecksburg incident, a photograph is mentioned but it's not part of the official reports.
I looked into it and the only source I could find that detailed anything like this was from a conspiracy website from 2011.
Interestingly enough, in 2007 Wikipedia was edited to contain the John Murphy allegations. It wasn't sourced and in 2014, the part on the Wikipedia was word for word exaclty the same as the one on the website, thus it was removed. However, the Wikipedia page did have a few links to some alleged sourcesExternal Quote:A reporter and news director for the local radio station WHJB, John Murphy, arrived on the scene of the event before authorities had arrived, in response to several calls to the station from alarmed citizens. He took several photographs and conducted interviews with witnesses. His former wife Bonnie Milslagle later reported that all but one roll of the film were confiscated by military personnel. WHJB office manager Mabel Mazza described one of the pictures: "It was very dark and it was with a lot of trees around and everything. And I don't know how far away from the site he was. But I did see a picture of a sort of a cone-like thing. It's the only time I ever saw it."
In the following weeks, Murphy became enveloped with the incident and wrote a radio documentary called Object in the Woods, featuring his experiences and interviews he had conducted that night. Shortly before the documentary would have aired, he received an unexpected visit at the station from two men in black suits identifying themselves as government officials. They requested to speak with him in a back room behind closed doors. The meeting lasted about 30 minutes. A WHJB employee, Linda Foschia, recalled the men confiscated some of Murphy's audio tapes from that night, and that no one knows what happened to the remaining photographs.
A week after the visit, an agitated Murphy aired a censored version of the documentary, which he claimed in its introduction had to be edited due to some interviewees requesting their statements be removed from the broadcast in fear of getting in trouble with the police and Army. The new version contained nothing revealing, and did not mention an object at all. Mazza, and also Murphy's wife, remember the aired documentary was entirely different from what Murphy had originally written. (See pp. 4–5 of CFI's report in External links for details of the aired documentary.)
After the airing, Murphy became uncharacteristically despondent and completely stopped all investigation on the case and refused to talk to anyone about it again, and never gave clear reasons why. In February 1969, Murphy was struck and killed by an unidentified car in an apparent hit - and - run while crossing a road. The hit-and-run occurred near Ventura, California while Murphy was on vacation.
Excerpt from the 2014 edition of the article
Excerpt from the website
The whole section was removed as it was uncited and was exactly the same as the articles on the website.
I checked the citation and it gives an error 404, I looked on the wayback machine and it seems to be just directing to the Sci-Fi documentary The new Roswell: Kecksburg. The other is a CFI report which, again, is a dead link. But using the wayback machine I managed to get the report up. It says to read the 4th and 5th page for details. The report was written by Leslie Kean who has previously worked on different UFO related stories and it pretty much retells the same exact things as the other sources (Murphy making the documentary, being supressed, releasing a censored version and eventually being killed). I believe this report is from 2005 making this the earliest source of the John Murphy planning on creating the documentary.
I couldn't find anything else aside from the rehashing of the same story so I decided to look for the documentary and again I could not find anything, the top result was the Wikipedia article and the others were either unrelated or where the same word-for-word retelling of the same story.
At this point I started to even question if the person existed, apparently there is archive footage of him as he's credited in conspiracy documentary
In addition, apparently there have been records of the documentary as, according to this website, they know how the documentary started but again it's not sourced.
I'm quite stumped, I cannot find anything else besides the surface level re-telling of the same story and no other source I delve into don't go into anymore detail.External Quote:Murphy advises the audience at the start of the documentary, "We regret that part of the program had to be censored and other parts of the program had to be cut out entirely."
He then goes out of his way to make the following assertion: "This station has not been contacted by any official agency of the state, federal, or local government in connection with this program."
What do you guys think? Do you think the documentary existed and if it did, do you think it was suppressed?