Toms River’s unexplained sky photographs, filed as Blue Book Case 2853 (1945)

A file that predates the program’s name

Project Blue Book was the U.S. Air Force’s UFO investigation program, and it took in files from the earlier Project Sign and Project Grudge. Among the microfilmed case files is a folder whose cover sheet is typed in full as: “File 2853 / November 1, 1945 / Tom’s River, New Jersey / 5 photos.” The date is several years before Blue Book existed under that name, so this is older material that was swept into the archive rather than a case the program worked at the time.

What the surviving pages show

The digitized folder runs to three pages. The first is that typed cover sheet, and it carries nothing else. The two pages that follow are photographic sheets, viewed directly for this entry. They hold small prints showing bare winter trees, a road, and low buildings against a pale sky, with clusters of small dark specks above the tree lines; in one print the specks are circled by hand. Strips of paper held by large paperclips cover parts of both sheets. Two compass figures are written by hand beneath the prints on the second sheet: 120° and 180°. One print appears to show people standing outdoors.

No caption, witness name, camera type, or report accompanies the photographs. The item's own OCR text file is empty, and its searchable-text file holds 28 bytes.

An unusually thin file for a photo case

Next to Blue Book cases with narrative reports, File 2853 preserves almost no text: a title page and two picture sheets. That may reflect what a 1945 investigator wrote down, what was later microfilmed, or what has been digitized. Nothing in the material reviewed gives an explanation, an evaluation, or an "identified as" notation, and no other account of this case was located. What the file records is the photographs, the place, and the date.