Are UFOs, Bigfoot, other ‘unusual’ Pa. reports real? This researcher aims to find out

Stan Gordon has dedicated his life to the unknown.

The Pennsylvania native has spent decades investigating UFO activity (or UAP, as they’re now officially called) across the Keystone State along with cryptids (think: Bigfoot). He’s written several books, and has been featured on panels during conventions such as the Kecksburg UFO Festival and on shows including “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Paranormal PA got the chance to sit down with Stan to discuss his experience investigating the stranger goings-on throughout Pennsylvania, as well as his process in researching each case.

How’d you get into this type of research?

Well, to give you a bit of history, I started this when I was 10 years old back in 1959, just as a young kid that was interested in science and electronics, and I just happened to — one evening in October 1959 — hear a radio show talking about unusual occurrences. They were talking about flying saucers (as they used to call them), haunted houses, strange creatures. As I was listening, I was curious and wanted to know if these people were making these stories up or if they were telling the truth.

So, I began to often go to my local library in Greensburg, Pa., to read all the books they had on the subject. And I began to make scrapbooks; I used to cut articles out of the newspaper every time something would show up. So my interest continued as I started reading all the articles out there.

It was of course 1965 when the incident happened near Kecksburg, about 12 miles from my home. I was then 16 years old, and I was documenting all this information that was breaking in the news that evening around Pittsburgh. I’ve been out on the field ever since investigating.

What’s your own research process like?

In 1969, I decided to set up a hotline for the public to report UFO sightings. Back in those days, of course, there was a whole lot more ridicule [regarding UFOs] then there is today, but I tried to keep it scientific and professional, and I sort of made contacts with the local police and the news media.

I could tell you, within weeks of people finding out the fact that I was taking these calls, the telephone of my home was ringing off the hook day and night. There were so many calls coming in — people calling in about not only UFO sightings, but anything unusual. Again, haunted houses, strange footprints, strange sounds, anything unusual they’d see in the sky. It got to the point very quickly where I realized I couldn’t do this all on my own.

So, I decided to establish a long-term research group to investigate these reports. In 1970 I founded the first of three groups that would investigate these cases across Pennsylvania. In many of these cases, I mean, we were there on the scene, we interviewed people personally whenever we could. Over the years, we acquired various statistical evidence — we had laboratories, they analyzed some of the materials. We were pretty deeply involved in this.

I had scientists, I had engineers, I had technicians, I had police officers, I had former military specialists — they all volunteered to go out and investigate these cases. And over the years we investigated hundreds of hundreds of reports. But [there was a limit] as to what we could do, because one, there was no funding, and two, we did it all out of our own pockets.

For many, many years we did that, but now I’m an independent researcher.

How were you able to sift through these reports and determine what may have been legitimate versus, well, not?

What we found out was that when we took the time to properly investigate these incidents … many of the reports looked strange and unusual [at first], but when you take the time to properly investigate them, many turn out to be natural or manmade in origin. Period. And that still goes on today.

I mean, within the last year, we had multiple sightings of the Starlink satellite across the state and around the country. They look very strange and unusual, and people don’t know what they’re seeing, so a lot of people were reporting in.

UFOs, quite often over the years, turn out to be a misidentification: bright planets or stars, big bright fireball meteors that come over occasionally. We’ve had the reentry of space debris, of course now we get a lot of drone reports. You get balloon reports. There’s a lot of things that look strange, but we can often track them down and explain what they are.

But then again, we get significant reports. In the over 64 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen a UFO or even a ghost. I haven’t seen any of them. But I’ve seen a lot of evidence, I’ve interviewed thousands of people from all types of backgrounds, including many professional and well-educated people who’ve seen these things. Many of these people would never believe that these things could exist till they had their own personal experience.

I’d said, years ago, I believe there’s more than one origin to the UFO category mystery. I think a small percentage are possible extraterrestrial, but a lot of what we’re dealing with is something much more unusual.

The way you’re speaking reminds me of a group of paranormal investigators I went on a ghost hunt with back in May. It seems like, similar to them, you get rid of all the potential naturally-occurring events before you land on something being beyond what could be normally explained.

Yes, that’s what it, that’s what you really need to do; you need to look at this scientifically and open-mindedly. And you got to first come up with some type of explanation before you can say something is unusual.

But I can tell you, over the years, I’ve investigated probably thousands of UFO cases and hundreds of Bigfoot sightings in Pennsylvania, many cryptids, with many of these sightings being daylight reports. Some of these were very large-structured objects [that were] low to the ground. Very low to the ground. Some in daylight, some at nighttime. But they were close-range range reports. A lot of these types of cases I couldn’t easily dismiss.

And many of the [Bigfoot] reports, especially in more recent years, are daylight sightings at relatively close range. So this is not like when people see [something] quite a distance away, they’re guessing at it — these are detailed accounts where people [get into] the physical description, and what took place during the observation. Some cases there’s more than one witness. Some cases there’s physical evidence [like] footprints.

Some turned out to be misidentifications — some turned out to be shaggy dogs, some of course turned out to be a misidentification of a bear. Some turned out to be hunters in ghillie suits and camouflage, thing like that. But then there were so many close-range, detailed reports with animal reactions, sometimes [with] more than one creature in the same place.

This is actually perfect for the next question! In your career you’ve probably come across plenty of naysayers who dismiss claims of aliens and cryptids and ghosts with the old “if they exist why can’t they get better footage or photos of them” argument. How do you respond to that?

Well, first of all, I never try to convince anybody. I never had my own personal encounter.

There’s just a multitude of witnesses. Many times you’re on the scene with them after it happened, and you see grown men with tears in their eyes. Grown men shaking … when people have Bigfoot encounters, these things were within 10 feet of them, and they were so scared they temporarily closed up and left their homes. That’s the kind of reaction you see over the years.

I’ve had people call me about something they’ve never reported, and you can hear it in their voice how stressed they are, how shaken they still are. You can hear it verbally, their expressions when they tell you about what they saw, how they’ve been unable to share it with most people because they’re afraid about being laughed at. And, I mean, these people have nothing to gain.

Especially a lot of hunters and outdoorsmen — these fellas and women used to laugh about stories about [someone] seeing Bigfoot or even a black panther or things like [that] seen in the woods of Pennsylvania, until they had their own experiences, and for them, for many of them it was a life changing experience.

Also, [when I first started researching these things], people were calling them in to the police or media. They had no way of knowing around what other people in the state were reporting, or even in their area. And there were so many similar reports where people were verifying other people’s accounts. That was one of the strangest cases ever documented in the world.

What you’ve got to look at are the similarities, the little details, the reactions between witnesses. Going back over and over again, seeing how they answer their accounts, if they’re changing. But there are so many patterns and details that keep showing up, some we don’t even understand.

Do you think that the public having increased access to information through the Internet and social media has helped bring reports of this phenomenon to the spotlight?

Oh, there’s no doubt. I mean, there’s a huge public interest in these types of events.

There’s TV shows now, radio shows, the podcasts out there now, too. There’s more and more books being written about the subject. People are more aware of it, but there are a lot of things that [they] are not aware of, and people are just fascinated by it and they want answers. After so many years now, people want to know the truth about what these things are that people are seeing in the sky, or even in the woods.

Now, for years, as you mentioned before, ufologists and cryptozoologists have been met with ridicule for reporting and even investigating this stuff. Now we have Congressional hearings regarding UAPs. What do you think changed that helped to add to the gravitas to these topics?

I’ve always been of the opinion that the government knows more than what they’re telling the public. Also that they do not have the answer themselves; they’re very much aware of it.

I think we’re dealing with subjects that are so beyond our present scientific understanding. I don’t think anyone understands it. And I think the government is in the position where, they know what’s going on, but they’re probably concerned about how much they can really release to the public because they don’t have the answers themselves.

They have to address there because there’s a huge public interest now, and there’s the interest of Congress, by people with different political views who are together on this that want to find out the truth themself. And I think the door is opening slowly, and leaves the government now admitting to some of these objects.

I think it’s kind of interesting, you know, if you read some of the news accounts, they’re saying finding no evidence that these things are extraterrestrial so far, but also that there are incidents out there that they cannot explain away. I think that they’re probably very much aware of incidents that are more than meets the eye.

You can check out Stan’s website as well as his latest book here and here.

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