♪ >> Muncie is sort of the typical Midwestern small city.

>> A very hometown feel, crossroads of America.

It's a good place to live and raise a family.

>> At first glance, Muncie seems like another small Midwestern town, but looks can be deceiving.

♪ >> There are a lot of weird and eerie things that have gone on in Muncie for very many years.

I don't think it was out of the ordinary to have people seeing UFOs here.

It had happened before, but in 1973, it was a much bigger deal.

♪ >> In 1973, something was happening in the skies above Muncie.

♪ What started as whispers turned into something much louder and much stranger.

♪ By October, these UFO sightings were so abundant that newspaper articles from the time read like a Hollywood script.

[ Siren ] [ Radio chatter ] >> Muncie went through sort of a UFO mania.

Throughout the month of October, there were hundreds of reports of UFO sightings in Muncie and Delaware County.

>> It just kind of seemed to explode for about five or six days.

>> One in particular, there was a woman who reported that an object had landed in her backyard.

And her neighbor reported hearing loud clicking noises at the same time as this occurrence.

And a sheriff's deputy came and spoke with her.

And he said, I don't know what she saw, but she definitely saw something because she was frightened.

>> Then it seems that the intersection of Wheeling and McGaillard was a hotspot because there were several sightings in that area.

♪ >> And just when it seemed strange enough, things got even weirder!

>> There was supposedly a call to police from something that happened near Wheeling, where people said -- the person who reported it said, "There are people out here that aren't people."

♪ And that one was always the really creepy quote that we found in the newspaper.

>> She had seen something silverly with scales is what she said.

So apparently the aliens landed.

♪ >> And panic ensued.

Like any good mania, word spread like wildfire.

>> A hundred calls to Muncie police, more calls to the sheriff's department.

Mostly it had to do with lights and moving objects, maybe lights low to -- to the ground.

It seemed to have to do with a lot of colored lights.

>> By late October, the sightings had become part of the town's identity, blurring the line between news and pop culture.

>> There was a Halloween costume contest at the mall that October, and a lot of people dressed in outer space outfits because of the whole UFO buzz that was going around Muncie.

We found an ad in the newspaper from November 9th, 1973, from the Dairy Queen that said, UFOs have landed at the north Dairy Queen and to come get a Horrible Creature sundae.

♪ >> The sightings continued for years, but the tone began to shift, more and more explanations began to emerge.

>> All the way up through 1977, there were stories in the newspaper, but gradually more and more of them had rational explanations for what they could be.

They found a piece of tinfoil was high in a tree and it was reflecting lights from neon signs from local businesses.

My favorite one was the UFO's explanation was an airplane that was flying overhead with a banner behind it that was advertising steaks for a local lounge, and that was the UFO.

>> The reports that came out, either concentrated on these helicopters or on weather balloons.

So maybe, maybe not.

♪ >> And while the skies eventually quieted, a new kind of light took over.

The bright lights of Hollywood.

[ Radio chatter ] >> The character that Richard Dreyfuss plays, Roy Neary, part of it is set in Muncie.

He has his UFO experience in Muncie in the film, and so the correlation between the two, because it's only four years apart from when the UFO mania hit Muncie and when the film came out, there's, you know, theories that that's why they chose Muncie as a location.

>> To some, they are just stories.

But for others, these moments are history worth preserving.

>> All of these stories, whether it's UFOs or, you know, unsolved mysteries, I think that has an important place in our history and something that people should know about and study just because it is part of our community's history.

We should sort of embrace that we have those stories here, because they also make us unique.