Rash of local ‘flying saucer’ sightings in 1952

By Michelle Quigley

When you search the term “flying saucer” in The Palm Beach Post and Times historic archives, more stories show up in 1952 than any other year.

That was the year Mrs. F. B. Holden of El Prado in West Palm Beach said she and her five children saw a “snow white and round” flying saucer, and hardware store clerk and Boy Scoutmaster D.S. “Sonny” DesVergers said he encountered an alien spacecraft that zapped him with a fireball in a wooded area off Military Trail near Lantana Road.

An enterprising car dealer picked up on the unidentified flying object fever and offered a free paint job — “two-tone if desired” — to the first flying saucer owner to bring his saucer in:

A few weeks later the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office identified the source of at least a few of the sightings as dragline excavator with a 90-foot lighted boom that was working late scooping muck west of Lake Worth:

Tags: ufos