On November 9, 1974, three teenagers and several anonymous callers reported seeing a mysterious glowing object fall from the skies into a small silt pond behind Russell Park in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and even though police have written off the affair as a massive hoax, doubts continue to exist.
Some of the reasons for the doubt include the testimony of a Russell Park employee who arrived on the scene 15 minutes after the alleged splashdown. He said the brightness of the object fluctuated, brightening and dimming alternately. A volunteer fireman backed up the statement, and said that the object he saw glowing in the pond could not have been the railroad lantern which was retrieved by police the next day. Police had tried to hook the thing into a net on the end of a long pole on Sunday, the 10th, but had no luck. A policeman, speaking "off the record," said that what he saw in the water could not have been a railroad lantern. Other points which lend doubt were the facts that a scuba diver from New York State retrieved the lantern, his wife said she would not comment when asked whether he had been requested to go to Carbondale by authorities there, and a police scuba diving team as well as divers from the Wallenpaupack Scuba Club (located in Carbondale) were not asked to search for the lantern.
A Carbondale merchant who sells lanterns such as that retrieved from the pond said the lantern couldn't have stayed lit for nine hours (from the time it was seen to come down until it was retrieved). Consequently, a large number of people in the Carbondale area doubt that the police retrieved the real source of the glow.