North Hudson Park UFO (Stonehenge Incident), 1975

The sighting

In the early hours of a January morning in 1975, George O'Barski, a 72-year-old retiree, was driving home through North Hudson Park in North Bergen, New Jersey, at roughly 2:45 to 3:00 a.m. His car radio filled with static and the station faded. As he slowed, he heard a droning sound he later compared to a refrigerator hum and saw a bright object pass behind the trees and hover about ten feet above the ground. HowStuffWorks describes the craft as roughly 30 feet across, flat-bottomed, with a domed top, vertical windows and an intense interior light. O'Barski reported about ten small figures, roughly three and a half feet tall and wearing helmets and light coveralls, who climbed down and dug soil into bags with small spades. They returned to the craft within about four minutes, and it flew off to the north. The next morning O'Barski reportedly found some fifteen small holes where it had stood.

The Wikipedia list of reported U.S. sightings dates the event to 12 January 1975. Other accounts give mid-January, and the exact night is not firmly established.

The Stonehenge link and the investigation

The park borders the Stonehenge, an apartment building whose name gave the case its popular label. Budd Hopkins, who later became known for abduction research, took up the story after O'Barski told it to him months later. Hopkins wrote it up for The Village Voice in 1976, and the account later appeared in his 1981 book Missing Time, as Wikipedia's Stonehenge article notes. Hopkins also interviewed the building's doorman, Bill Pawlowski, whose account matched O'Barski's in part. Pawlowski reported a row of bright lights and a crack as a lobby window shattered near his feet. Police found an indentation in the glass but no projectile. Pawlowski was no longer working at the building when Hopkins tracked him down.

In 1976, Hopkins, Ted Bloecher and Jerry Stoehrer of MUFON attempted a re-enactment. They found about fifteen bare circles in the grass, but the holes had reportedly been filled in over the summer by the park custodian. Jim Moseley, a contemporary investigator, reported that much of the Stonehenge staff and some tenants had unusual sightings of their own, though several refused to talk for fear of ridicule. Night staff described a figure of about five feet wearing a helmet and carrying a light, seen walking in the park on several nights that February.

Case for and against

The case rests almost entirely on O'Barski's testimony and secondhand reports collected by investigators. Independent corroboration is limited to a few witnesses who saw a bright light in the park that night, and only O'Barski claimed to see figures. No physical evidence beyond the holes, which were filled in before anyone measured them, has been documented. The police did not respond to the sightings; when Pawlowski described his experience to a friendly officer, the reply was that he "must've been drinking or something."

Skeptical observers point to several features. Geneva Hagen, who wrote about the area's UFO activity, notes that the 1976 "UFO seance" organized by performers Warren and Libby Freiberg drew a crowd of about 500 and that the press releases publicizing its time and place contributed to the turnout. She found the trance performance unconvincing. Hagen also observes that three in the morning is a statistically common sighting hour simply because few people are outdoors then. The park's late-night isolation, a car radio losing signal (which can happen for ordinary reasons), and the reliance on a single witness's memory all leave room for mundane explanations that the investigators never tested.

Legacy

The case is one of the New York–area reports that Hopkins publicized in the mid-1970s, a period when he was building the research that led to his later abduction work and Missing Time. Today the park is called James J. Braddock Park, and the story survives mainly through the Hopkins and Moseley accounts and local retellings. The credibility rating reflects a single detailed witness, investigator reconstructions after the fact, and no documented physical evidence.