A strange news story from a small Northeast Pennsylvania city caught Mark Stamey’s attention as he watched television with friends at a New York home in November 1974.
A UFO reportedly crash landed in Carbondale.
The 26-year-old scuba diver tossed his diving gear in a van and drove from upstate New York to Carbondale with two friends. They arrived at Russell Park in the morning and found a crowd gathered at the mining pond hoping to glimpse an eerie glow beneath the surface.
“We heard about the spaceship, so we started laughing about it,” Stamey, now 77, said in an interview from Key Largo, Florida. “I said, ‘I want to drive that thing down the middle of the street and wave at people.’”
The young diver persuaded city police to let him explore the murky pond after teen boys told officers an otherworldly tale of an object flying over Salem Mountain and crashing at Russell Park.
Tethered to a police boat floating above with only about 3 feet of visibility, Stamey searched until he spotted a metal handle sticking up out of the silt. He lifted the object and revealed a railroad lantern with its bulb still glowing, powered by a 6-volt battery.
“This is a decoy,” he thought to himself.
Stamey surfaced and handed the lantern to a man in the police boat — a moment captured by a Scranton Times photographer.
“This can’t be … ” Stamey started to say, but a shout of “We found it!” cut him off.
Scuba diver Mark Stamey hands off a mine lantern to Jerome Gillott after discovering it on the bottom of a mine pond in Russell Park on Monday, Nov. 11, 1974. A Scranton Times photographer captured the scene, with a closeup of the lantern superimposed. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
Stamey’s discovery thrust him, unwittingly, into the orbit of the “Carbondalien,” a legend still celebrated 51 years later. The second annual Carbondalien Festival begins Friday evening with a parade and concert. The festival continues all day Saturday in downtown Carbondale.
Although city police quickly deemed the incident a hoax — just a lantern tossed in the water by a teenager to scare his sister — the story persisted. Some believed there was more in the water — a piece of space debris, a Russian satellite or a UFO.
Regardless of what happened that night, Carbondale embraces its Roswell-esque encounter.
Stamey, who lives in Manhattan after a career as a journalist reporting on crime for The New York Times, the New York Post and the New York Daily News, was stunned to learn how the Carbondalien story endures.
How does he feel about his central role in the tale?
“I am totally mortified,” he said. “Because I got duped by the cops.”
The lore
The Carbondalien’s tale began on a Saturday night around 7 on Nov. 9, 1974, when a group of teenagers from Russell Street told police they were walking about three blocks from the silt pond when they heard “whirring” and saw a red, sparking ball cross over Salem Mountain from the east and plunge into the water. The boys were among several who called police that night, according to news reports.
Officers arrived about two hours later. One policeman shot at the glowing object with his .38-caliber revolver.
The object continued to glow for about nine hours, dispersing into a 15-foot-diameter circle. Stamey recalls one of the teen boys who spoke to police telling him the light made a sweeping pattern.
A search boat hooked an object at about 2:45 a.m. Sunday. As it was raised, the net went limp, the object fell and the light went out.
The story quickly gained national attention, attracting military personnel, police, UFO researchers and curious onlookers from at least 17 states and Canada.
Two volunteer scuba divers asked to search the water that afternoon, but police denied their request, according to news reports.
Police later allowed Stamey into the water, and by Monday, Nov. 11, 1974, Carbondale had its answer.
“‘All that glitters is not gold’ is an old saying. By the same token, all that glitters isn’t a flying saucer either,” a Scranton Times reporter wrote in the Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1974, edition. “This fact hit home with somewhat of a groan in Carbondale Monday afternoon when the hand of a scuba diver emerged from the murky waters of a silt pond behind Russell Park clutching an electric railroad lantern.”
In a retrospective article 25 years later, The Sunday Times interviewed Robert Gillette — one of the three teenage boys who spoke to police. Gillette, who was 39 at the time, said he had tossed the lantern into the water to scare his sister, Maria, and her friends.
When police arrived, fearing repercussions, Gillette told the paper, “I made the story up, and they bought it.”
However, in 2019, Gillette’s sister, Maria, appeared on a “UF BROS” podcast hosted by local barbers Shane Butler, Frank Froese and Brian “Toxic” Evans. She told the men her recollection chronologically, starting with her brother running into their house to tell her what he saw. She didn’t believe her brother threw the lantern into the water and thought there was something else in the pond, describing it as a “huge, round glow” that took up half the pond.
During that podcast, Gillette said she watched something glow underwater as the teens waited a few hours for police to arrive.
She recalled an officer saying, “If you open your mouths about this, there will be more than a UFO in the pond.”
Stamey had a similar interaction. He remembered talking to a teenager — who he remembered as Bobby Gillette — who was there with his friends and sister.
“He said that they were trying to frame him for it,” Stamey said. “They said if he didn’t change his story to say he threw the lantern in the pond, they were going to send him to juvenile hall.”
The 1999 newspaper report that interviewed Robert Gillette also addressed a long-standing mystery when onlookers saw a flatbed with a tarp-covered object leaving the scene. In that article, then-Police Chief Dominick Andidora, who was a young police officer in 1974, said it was a piece of broken machinery from a coal breaker on the flatbed, which was removed early Sunday morning.
The scuba diver
Stamey believes there was more in the water than just a lantern.
When he and his friends drove from Skaneateles — a New York town west of Syracuse — to Carbondale with their scuba gear, they thought it would be funny.
“We were bored — nothing going on,” he said. “Let’s go see if we can find something from outer space and get salvage rights, as a matter of fact, was the joke.”
Scuba diver Mark Stamey sits in his dive gear at Russell Park in Carbondale, as published in the Nov. 17, 1974, edition of The Sunday Times. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
They asked around to find the “UFO.” After parking their van, they walked to the pond, still giggling about finding an alien.
At the time, crews were trying to pump out some of the water and had unsuccessfully used a backhoe to dig a shallow trench, Stamey said. The water wasn’t glowing when he got there.
His friends were reluctant to go into the pond, so Stamey introduced himself to acting Police Chief Francis Dottle by volunteering to be a lifeguard.
Acting Carbondale Police Chief Francis Dottle, right, looks out over the Russell Park pond, first published in the Nov. 17, 1974, edition of The Sunday Times. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
He then convinced police to let him dive and look for the object. Officers made him tie a rope around his waist, which was held by an officer in the rowboat floating above him. He contends they used the tether to limit where he could swim while also keeping him in the area of the semi-buried lantern.
“I was doing a search pattern for them, but they kept jerking the rope to get me off the course, like they were trying to drag me over the thing,” Stamey said.
Scuba diver Mark Stamey dives into a pond at Russell Park on Monday, Nov. 11, 1974, published in the Nov. 17, 1974, edition of The Sunday Times. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
The water was brown, the silt had a mayonnaise-like consistency and any motion stirred up a cloud, he said.
Despite that, he recognized the handle of a railroad lantern buried in the silt. The light was facing down, and there were no skid marks or trenches around it in the water, indicating it had fallen straight down, he said.
“Unless it came straight down like plop, like a raindrop, there would’ve been a skid mark or something in that mayonnaise,” Stamey said.
He contends the immediate reaction of “We found it!” felt more like someone expected him to find it.
A photo of diver Mark Stamey emerging from the water with a railroad lantern, published in the Nov. 7, 1999, edition of The Sunday Times for the 25th anniversary of the UFO tale. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
Stamey said Dottle later directed him to search the pond again. The chief told him something along the lines of, “They’re not buying the story, so we’re going to send you back in again,” Stamey said.
Dottle cautioned him that if he saw something, “Don’t touch it.” Stamey still remembers his instructions.
“If it rattles, makes a rattling noise, or it emits a fluid, leave it alone,” he said. “Come out of the water with your arms out. We’ll cut your suit off and get you to a decontamination unit.”
Acting Carbondale Police Chief Francis Dottle inspects the railroad lantern, published in the Nov. 12, 1974, edition of The Scranton Tribune. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
He went back in, but the tether prevented him from searching in a grid.
“There wasn’t anything there, but there wasn’t anything where they let me go,” he said. “I was so mad. I start going in the one direction trying to straighten out my search pattern, and they pull on me.”
He didn’t see anything else, which seemed to satisfy people, he said.
“It was a beautiful, beautiful distraction,” Stamey said.
The festival
Carbondale’s celebration of the Carbondalien this weekend follows the success of last year’s inaugural festival.
Co-chair Nicole Curtis hoped the first event would attract about 1,000 people. The actual turnout roughly quadrupled that.
Curtis, who owns the Elements Cafe at 510 Main St. in Childs with her husband, Jack, emphasized the impact the festival’s foot traffic has on city businesses.
“It was just beyond what we ever could have imagined it was going to be,” she said. “It was just such a huge success — not just the festival, but for businesses.”
A smoking flying saucer is seen on a flatbed truck at Russell Park in Carbondale during the Carbondalien Festival on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024.
(Christopher Dolan / Staff Photographer)
Wooden cutouts of aliens are seen at the Carbondalien Festival in Carbondale on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (Christopher Dolan / Staff Photographer)
Phoebe Schanck, 8, of Lake Ariel plays a game while wearing her alien costume at the Carbondalien Festival in Carbondale on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (Christopher Dolan / Staff Photographer)
Jennifer Brennan of Thompson is seen dressed like an alien at the Carbondalien Festival in Carbondale on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024.
(Christopher Dolan / Staff Photographer)
People are seen in alien costumes at the Carbondalien Festival in Carbondale on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024.
(Christopher Dolan / Staff Photographer)
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A smoking flying saucer is seen on a flatbed truck at Russell Park in Carbondale during the Carbondalien Festival on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024.
(Christopher Dolan / Staff Photographer)
Festivities begin Friday at 6 p.m. with a Carbondalien Festival Light Parade starting at the PNC Bank parking lot on South Main Street. After the parade, the festival will hold a “Supernova Concert” inside the Hotel Anthracite’s Gravity Hall, 25 S. Main St., with doors opening at 7:30 and the concert starting at 8. Tom May of The Menzingers will headline the $15 concert, with other music from Universal Girlfriend, R.E. Barnett of Captain, We’re Sinking, and Angel House.
On Saturday, the mostly free festival takes place in downtown Carbondale from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Main Street will be closed between Seventh and Salem avenues for the “Landing Pad Marketplace,” which will feature about 50 vendors, artists, artisans and food trucks, Curtis said. Adults can enjoy beverages from wineries, a distillery, a cidery and a meadery; and there will be an alien art walk featuring artists, live music and live painting demonstrations by artists Eric Bussart and Zach Yahn, whose murals decorate the downtown.
Other free events include a supernatural speaker series on the second floor of City Hall, an alien open swim at the Greater Carbondale YMCA and alien mini golf at the Carbondale Public Library. The Greater Carbondale Chamber of Commerce will air WVIA’s Carbondalien documentary, “The Day Carbondale Stood Still,” including a question-and-answer session at 1 p.m. The library will also have a tinfoil-hat-making workshop, Curtis said.
“This is a subject that people are fascinated with, and they want to know more about,” Curtis said. “In the same breath, it’s just really fun. You can come, and you don’t have to believe in UFOs or aliens and just be silly and enjoy a beautiful day.”
The festival will hold a “Russell Park Experience,” an immersive, theatrical performance with nine actors, throughout the day. Working with a playwright, the Carbondale Historical Society and the Lackawanna County Convention and Visitors Bureau, the event recreates the events of Nov. 9, 1974. Curtis said participants will be treated like members of the press looking to get the scoop on what happened that night. Actors will play key figures from the story, from the teen boys to the scuba diver. The experience costs $15.
“You really feel like you’re part of this complete craziness that happened 51 years ago,” she said.
There will also be $20 hot-air balloon rides above Russell Park to get a UFO perspective.
Mayor Michele Bannon sees the festival as a sign of growth in Carbondale that attracts many people to the city. Residents were initially embarrassed by the story and wanted to hide it, but over time, Bannon believes younger generations have embraced it.
“Why not embrace it?” she said. “Having our own special story about the alien and being able to share it and talk about it and learn a little bit more every year, I love that.”
West Scranton native Tom May, 39, a vocalist and guitarist for The Menzingers — a punk band that formed in Scranton before moving to Philadelphia in 2008 — said he has been interested in UFOs since he was a kid checking out books about them in the Scranton Public Library’s metaphysical section. May, who now lives in Philadelphia, drove to Carbondale last year for the festival, where he ran into fellow Philly musicians from Universal Girlfriend.
He enjoyed it so much he contacted Curtis to ask if they could perform. May, whose family still lives in the area, said he rarely does solo shows.
“To be able to come back up and see that people are organizing things like this for the community, for the businesses in the area, for the families and people in the area, it’s just so exciting to see,” he said.
The Carbondalien is very much a Northeast Pennsylvania story, May said.
“Everybody has their own version of it, and everybody has their own slight connection to it,” he said. “It’s just all the stories weaving in and out, and it’s become like a myth and a legend in and of itself.”