Two of the most iconic flying saucer photos ever are from RI? Our history of UFO sightings

WOONSOCKET — Was there an out-of-this-world cause of a 1967 power failure that knocked out electricity in Woonsocket, Cumberland and North Smithfield?

Harold A. Trudel of Woonsocket thought so.

A day later he told The Providence Journal and its sister paper, The Evening Bulletin, that he saw a UFO hovering over power lines in the city just before the blackout.

And Trudel went one step further: He produced several photos of the whirling, saucer-like craft, some of the most famous UFO photos ever published.

What makes the Woonsocket UFO story relevant today?

After shooting down a Chinese surveillance balloon Feb. 4, the U.S. military shot down three other unidentified flying objects in North American airspace.

While the flying objects were initially unidentified, they were eventually described as "weather balloons," the textbook Pentagon explanation for UFO sightings.

That made some wonder whether Rhode Island has ever been visited by, um, weather balloons.

RI is a busy place for UFO sightings

Rhode Island may not feel like "UFO Central," but the Ocean State ranks 15th nationally in sightings per person, according to Stacker.com, a data journalism hub that compiled data from the National UFO Reporting Center. The center's a real place where the Federal Aviation Administration refers people who want to report UFO sightings.

According to Stacker's January 2023 analysis, Rhode Islanders have reported 53 UFOs per 100,000 residents.

New England is a pretty busy place, with Vermont ranked fourth nationally, New Hampshire sixth, Maine seventh and Connecticut 14th.

Only Massachusetts isn't in the Top 20, ranking 32nd, with 37 sightings per 100,000 residents.

Stacker notes that Rhode Island's UFO history includes "two of the most iconic flying saucer photos of the '60s," the ones taken by Trudel in 1967.

How Trudel spotted the Woonsocket UFO

Trudel, who was 29, unemployed and living on Paradis Avenue at the time, told reporters then that he used to drive almost every night toward the hills of East Woonsocket with a World War II-era box camera loaded with film because he had seen UFOs in the area in the past.

The saucer turned above the treetops, Trudel said, and he followed it up a dirt road toward the power lines.

Trudel was driving along West Wrentham Road near the Cumberland line around 5:10 p.m. when he spotted the craft, which he described as about 30 feet in diameter with a white dome about a quarter-mile from him. He said it was hovering noiselessly over the power lines at an altitude of about 300 feet before speeding off and disappearing right around the time of the power failure.

What happened to the electricity?

Right before the power died, several witnesses reported a low, rumbling noise like an explosion followed by an intense white fireball. Several insulators on utility poles in the area were burned.

Paul E. Gramstorff, a spokesman for the Blackstone Valley Electric Company, said that although a 23,000-volt transmission line went dead in the area where Trudel reported seeing the UFO, the breakers for that line never tripped and there was no evidence of an external cause of the power failure.

"We're still unable to locate the exact location or cause," Gramstorff told The Evening Bulletin.

That July was a busy time for Rhode Island UFOs

Trudel wasn't the only one in Rhode Island to spot a UFO that week in 1967.

A few days earlier, four girls, ages 9 to 13, spotted a craft over Wendell Street in Providence's Olneyville neighborhood at 9 p.m. one night.

And the area where Trudel had spotted the saucer was active, too.

"We've had a sharp increase in the number of UFO reports over East Woonsocket in the past three weeks," Joseph L. Ferriere of Woonsocket told the Bulletin. He was editor and publisher of Probe, an amateur magazine, with 20,000 circulation, devoted to unexplained flying objects. Ferriere was also a friend of Trudel, who helped with the magazine.

Was Trudel's UFO real?

From the moment Trudel went public with his sighting, doubters lined up to critique his story and the accompanying photos of a flying saucer.

"A skeptic said it looks like someone threw his hat in the air," The Evening Bulletin reported on July 13, 1967.

Trudel's credibility took a serious hit 16 years later, when the nationally syndicated television show "PM Magazine" aired video that Trudel said he had shot in September 1968 — but never mentioned until 1983 — of a cylindrical object moving across the sky in the Cumberland woods off Tower Hill Road.

"I would be inclined to think it's a hoax," Walter N. Webb told The Journal in 1983. Webb was assistant director of the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston and a 30-year veteran of UFO investigations. He said the motion of the "UFO" suggested a small tube suspended on a thin horizontal wire and pulled along by a thread — not a large spaceship.

Other experts concurred in debunking the video.

"They can think what they want. It doesn't matter to me," Trudel told The Journal then. "I won't back off from what I observed and photographed."

Trudel could not be located for comment this week.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Iconic UFO photos of flying saucers are from Woonsocket RI