October 1973: Indiana's wave, and this county's measured share of none

Item 5 — the 1973 wave share measured at press and chronology strength — searched negative for the county

The great wave of October 1973 — the Pascagoula and Coyne autumn — burned across Indiana's centre and south, and the chronology of it contains no St. Joseph County entry. Indiana's documented share, from NICAP's 1973 chronology, is specific and southern-leaning: 19 October, Indianapolis — a Cessna pilot, an object on radar, no further details in the chronology's source; 20 October, Mt. Vernon (Posey County) — a Louisville & Nashville train crew's encounter east of town; 22 October, Upton and Hartford City — the Hartford City case, in which a couple reported two small figures in the road at 9:45 p.m., became the wave's Indiana humanoid case, investigated by Connersville-based APRO field investigator Donald Worley and carried into the Center for UFO Studies' physical-trace catalogue for the heel-like impressions found in the cornfield the next day; 24 October, Fayette County — a dark object with blue and red lights and one blinding white light, state police called. Delaware County's chapter was the state's loudest: Muncie, where the public library's archivist counts hundreds of reports through October 1973, a hundred calls to police, an intersection (Wheeling and McGalliard) remembered as a hot spot, and a Dairy Queen advertising a "Horrible Creature Sundae" by 9 November — the mania that later fixed Muncie in the Close Encounters story. The wave's northernmost Indiana ripple in the record reached is a sonic boom heard as far as Goshen, in Elkhart County, on the night of 21–22 October, attached to the Hicksville, Ohio lights across the state line — presumed a sonic boom, with military jets observed. Against that chronology, the county test: NICAP's 1973 chronology, searched, carries no South Bend, Mishawaka or New Carlisle entry, and no St. Joseph County case from the wave appears in the APRO or CUFOS material reached. The town's share of the October 1973 wave is therefore measured at zero reports in the published chronology — printed as a press-record finding, with the settler for any deeper claim named: the October–November 1973 files of the South Bend Tribune, which covered the Muncie mania as state news and would have carried a local flap of any size.

Sources:

1. NICAP, UFO Chronology 1973 — Indianapolis (19 Oct.), Mt. Vernon (20 Oct.), Upton and Hartford City (22 Oct.), Fayette County (24 Oct.) entries; no St. Joseph County entry.
2. APRO Bulletin, September–October 1973, and CUFOS, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings (1975), p. 95 — the Hartford City case, investigated by Donald Worley.
3. Indiana Public Media, "Close Encounters of the Muncie Kind" (2026) — Delaware County Historical Society and Muncie Public Library accounts: hundreds of reports, 100 police calls, the 9 November 1973 Dairy Queen advertisement.
4. The Crescent-News (Defiance, Ohio), 22 October 1973 — erratic lights over Hicksville; the boom heard as far as Goshen, Indiana, presumed a sonic boom.