Part 21
A similar fall of angel hair occurred in the United States on October 22, 1954, near a school in Marysville, Ohio. At afternoon recess the pupils of the Jerome Elementary School noticed a dazzlingly bright object in the sky. It disappeared, and for the next forty-five minutes both children and teachers watched white, cottonlike tufts floating slowly down to the ground. The material was in long strands, very fine and soft, could be stretched and rolled into a tiny ball, but quickly vanished to nothing and left a green stain on the hands. The stuff clung to grass and cars, draped the telephone wires for a distance of three miles, and was like a misty canopy over the road[XI-6].
Unfortunately none of the material was preserved and no analysis was possible. Marysville is near Columbus, Ohio, an industrial center, and the stuff might have been waste products from one of the many factories. Since similar falls were reported in Indiana during the same period, the substance more probably was gossamer. As in the French incidents, the time was late October and the weather was perfect, a warm autumn day with a sunny, cloudless sky. Both the time and the weather were ideal for migrating spiders to take to the air, float down to earth on their fluffy parachutes, and then discard the no longer necessary _fils de la Vierge_.
Many falls of angel hair that occur in the warm days of Indian summer are probably abandoned gossamer. It is significant that of fourteen such incidents reported in Europe and the United States, all but three took place in October and November, the season of spider migration[XI-6]. In one of the three incidents reported in other months (Horseheads, New York, February 21, 1955) the angel hair was identified as waste products from the local milk plant.
One of the most recent reports of angel hair came from Sebree, Kentucky, on September 11, 1962, when state police and the local Civil Defense director were called in to investigate a strange substance that looked like spun glass, which had been floating down near the residence of Mr. Y in great quantities for more than an hour. The Air Force, when called for advice, suggested three possibilities: the material might be chemicals used in cloud seeding, might be refuse from a defective filter in a chemical or industrial plant, or might be gossamer formed by migrating spiders. The first two possibilities were quickly ruled out. The witnesses, when requestioned, remembered that they had indeed noticed spiders clinging to several bits of the material they had picked up. The troopers’ report concluded, “It is the belief of this unit the substance observed was gossamer formed by huge quantities of migrating spiders moving, which is normal for this season.”
The yearly migration of spiders and sloughing of gossamer is an established fact. As an explanation of angel hair it is far less fantastic than a still-hypothetical cruising spaceship.
_Other Varieties of Angel Hair_
Several types of angel hair not of arachnid origin have been reported in industrial areas, particularly in and near cities that have textile factories. When the filtering system of such a factory fails to work properly, lint and waste residues may be thrown into the air to be carried away by the wind and eventually deposited on the ground. Drifting fibers of nylon, rayon, and other fabrics can mystify an observer, especially if the residues break and disappear when touched. Some cities, such as Cincinnati, maintain an Air Pollution Center to deal with the problems resulting from air contamination by industrial wastes. Scientists at this and other centers often collaborate with ATIC in identifying unknown substances reported in connection with UFOs.
Late in the afternoon of September 25, 1956, a housewife in Cincinnati noticed a strange substance floating down into her yard, a white, fibrous material that curled when she touched it. Wondering if she had found some angel hair, she described the incident to the editors of _Orbit_, a saucer publication; in addition, she collected some of the material in a jar and sent it to the Air Force for analysis[XI-8]. Working in collaboration with the Air Pollution Center at Cincinnati, ATIC investigators subjected the material to chemical and microscopic tests and identified it as waste products from fibers of cuprammonium (Bemberg) rayon, from a local industrial plant[XI-9].
The possible varieties of angel hair increase with the development of new technologies. During March and April 1959, the Air Force received many reports that flying saucers were cruising over the mountains near Coburn, Virginia, regularly used a landing strip on an inaccessible peak of Sheep Rock Mountain, and frequently dropped angel hair on the nearby countryside. The investigating officer collected some of the material and identified it as a type of “window,” the rolls or long strips of aluminum foil used by the military in World War II to produce spurious radar echoes and confuse enemy anti-aircraft fire. The Coburn angel hair was identical with the foil used by Air Force planes carrying out experiments in the area. “Window” falls very slowly; dropped from a height of 40,000 feet, it may easily be visible for some time to ground observers, as well as interfere with local radar reception[XI-10].
A similar angel-hair incident was reported on November 23, 1960, when many residents in southern Michigan and the Midwest reported a mysterious, glowing white object in the eastern sky that was dropping strange material to the earth. Witnesses described the object variously as a comet, a satellite with a tail, or a saucer-shaped UFO. The angel hair was quickly identified as foil dropped by planes that were conducting a test of radar reception[XI-11].
Reports of angel hair still come in occasionally to ATIC and, if the explanation is not immediately obvious, are investigated. On the afternoon of October 12, 1959, officials at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, received a telephone call stating that unidentified substances were falling from unknown objects in the sky near the town of Washington. Two Air Force investigators arrived in the town before evening to interview the witnesses and examine the material.
The first sighting had occurred shortly before noon, when a farm woman noticed an object in the sky, traveling not particularly fast from southeast to west. A stream of peculiar-looking substance, broad as the vapor trail of a jet plane, was trailing behind and floating toward the earth. The object itself was “as large as a football,” brown or black in color, and maintained a perfectly straight, even course. A few hours later in a town a few miles northeast, a man mowing his lawn noticed on the grass two whitish-gray streaks about ten feet long and eight inches wide, extending from east to west. Deciding that the peculiar streaks were a fungus or a mold, he mowed across them; at once a gray dust rose about twenty inches into the air and then settled back to earth.
The Air Force investigators took samples of the dusty earth and grass for analysis. Chemical tests showed the presence of silver iodide. Finding silver in such an unlikely place posed a problem, but it also pointed the way to a solution. Silver iodide and other silver halides are used in cloud seeding to produce rain; long “plumes” of this material, ejected from planes, have been successfully tracked in mountainous country for distances of thirty-five miles downwind. A few questions in the right places produced the answer: research teams from the University of Georgia at Athens and from the Lockheed plant at Marietta had been in the air that day, carrying out experiments in cloud seeding. The angel hair was the silver iodide used in the experiment[XI-10].
Angel hair of less mysterious origin has now found its way into the culinary world. The restaurant of the Hotel Bristol in Córdoba, Argentina, offers “Angel-hair soup,” very fine threadlike spaghetti in chicken broth.
_The Wisconsin Pancakes_
Of the many substances offered the public as proof of extraterrestrial visitors, probably few have evoked more publicity than the Wisconsin pancakes. According to a plumber named Joe Simonton, of Eagle River, Wisconsin, a flying saucer with three peculiarly dressed occupants appeared in his yard on April 18, 1961, and hovered a few feet above the ground. When one of the saucermen indicated by sign language that he was thirsty and held out a two-handled jug, Simonton obligingly filled it with well water and handed it back. Looking through the open hatchway,