The Great Falls UFO Incident: Montana’s Unsolved Aerial Mystery
Great Falls, Montana – August 15, 1950
A clear summer afternoon in Great Falls, Montana, turned into one of the most compelling UFO sightings in U.S. history when two mysterious objects were captured on film near the city’s baseball stadium. The incident, later dubbed the “Great Falls UFO Incident,” has puzzled experts and sparked debate for decades.
The sighting occurred when Nicholas “Nick” Mariana, the general manager of the local baseball team, the Great Falls Electrics, spotted two bright, silvery discs streaking across the sky. Mariana, accompanied by his secretary, Virginia Raunig, quickly retrieved his 16mm movie camera and captured approximately 16 seconds of footage showing the objects moving silently through the air at high speeds.
Mariana described the objects as metallic, spinning discs flying in tandem at an estimated speed far beyond any known aircraft of the era. The footage, which later became known as the “Mariana Film,” is one of the earliest and most widely analyzed visual records of a UFO sighting.
Shortly after the sighting, the U.S. Air Force obtained the film as part of their investigation under Project Blue Book, the government’s program for studying unidentified flying objects. Mariana later claimed that when the footage was returned to him, key frames showing the clearest images of the objects were missing. This fueled speculation about a possible cover-up.
While skeptics have argued that the objects in the film could have been reflections from jet planes, proponents of the UFO theory point to the lack of sound and the unusual flight patterns as evidence of something otherworldly.
Today, the Great Falls UFO Incident remains one of the most debated cases in UFO history. The original footage has been digitally restored and continues to be studied by researchers and enthusiasts alike, making the incident a cornerstone of Montana’s UFO legacy.
Seventy-five years later, the question persists: What did Nick Mariana see that day in the skies over Great Falls? The answer remains as elusive as ever.
