Mysterious Hole In Basking Ridge Yard Puzzles Officials, Experts

May 13, 2011 2:30 PM

A hole in the front yard of a Basking Ridge, N.J. home is several feet long and wide and deep enough to swallow a 30 gallon trash can (credit: Steve Sandberg/1010 WINS)

Reporting Steve Sandberg

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BERNARDS TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) – A Basking Ridge homeowner would really like to know why there’s a crater in her front yard.

“To me it looked like something blew out of the ground because the grass was folded back, the rocks and dirt were all spewn out into the cul-de-sac and across the driveway,” Sue, who asked not to be identified out of concern that the hole may draw unwanted onlookers and crowds, said.

1010 WINS’ Steve Sandberg reports: Mystery In Basking Ridge

Her son, Jeff, believes something fell from the heavens.

“Something clearly came out of the sky and just hit it from an angle and then it all shot up the other way,” he said.

Officials and experts are also scratching their heads. For now, it appears the small crater that splayed debris across a 100-foot area wasn’t caused by a meteorite. Beyond that, it’s a mystery.

“It’s just really, really weird,” said Jerry Vinski, director of nearby Raritan Valley Community College’s planetarium, who conducted tests on the site. “We dug around and couldn’t find anything. We used metal detectors because all meteors have metal in them, and we couldn’t find anything, large or small.”

Bernards Township Police Capt. Edward Byrnes said whatever hit the front yard left a crater about 18 inches deep and roughly the size of a coffee table.

A State Police bomb squad ruled out explosives, Byrnes said.

According to Byrnes, no one in the neighborhood heard or saw anything at the time of the May 6 incident. The homeowner called police upon arriving home.

“The weather was clear, there were no reports of lightning strikes; nobody reported seeing anything,” Byrnes said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in 23 years.”

Vinski said that the hole could have been caused by an object falling from a plane. He said if the object was a meteorite, the impact would have been significant and would have been felt nearby.

“When you see meteor showers in the upper atmosphere, they’re traveling 50 miles a second,” he said. “Even if it’s slowing down through the atmosphere, you’re still going to have a sonic boom. And it would have left something behind, it wouldn’t have completely disintegrated.”

What do you think created the hole? Let us know below

(TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Mysterious Hole In Basking Ridge Yard Puzzles Officials, Experts

Mr Peabody

Google UFO Reporting Center.Go to Event heading,go to States,scroll down to New Jersey.Go to date 8-7-88.Sighting over Basking Ridge with 50 plus eye witness’es.Are they back?Was this hole made by some type of laser or beam weapon?!
Cato

Mayber a chunk of ice from an aircraft. Falling several miles, it would hit, make the crater, then melt, evaporate and disappear leaving no trace except the resulting hole.
apple

a huge white chthonian worm , like Tremors but uglier !
Daniel P

Or according to Einstein’s Theory, it was caused by a microscopic Black Hole that oozed up out of the ground and that disrupted the space-time continuum. Happens all the time.…. Move along folks, nothing to see here…..
Daniel P

It’s from an iceberg from the Atlantic Ocean or Iceland (That’s why they call it Iceland)……. Move along folks, nothing to see here…..
Edward May

All meteorites are not metal (iron-nickel), most are stoney type with little or no metal in them. The metal meteorites are easiest to find ( for collectors)but are not the majority.

Guest1290

There is a crater that covers a large area near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada which was believed to be caused by a large meteorite that crashed into the area 1.8 billion years ago. It had left behind a large crater known today as the Sudbury Basin. The full extent of the Sudbury Basin is 62 km long, 30 km wide and 15 km deep, although the modern ground surface is much shallower. The large impact crater filled with magma containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and other metals. For more information on the Sudbury Basin, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
Mark

Wrong. Prove it.
Frankentrina

Still, a meteorite would leave molten debris, even if it were non-metal and completely stone. The force and velocity by which it comes through the atmosphere, and the force of hitting the ground causes at least part of it if not all to become molten. Our area here contains a lot of non-metallic iron-ore rock, and we’ve found hundreds of perfectly round stone nodules both in creek beds and in digging, that was caused by such impacts.

doctor skinstick

it was clearly a big qeef from one of the tools that reside in basking ridge. Like fojo

Dr. Pipepounder

Comign from another doctors point of view, i think this doctor might know what hes talking about.. i really think hes on to sumthing

Colonel Sanders

I may not be a certified doctor… however, if there’s one thing I do know about it’s large brown holes. I’ve seen all shades and sizes and judging by the depth of this particular brown eye, I have to agree with both these highly-respected doctors.
-The Colonel

jeff

Landshark. No doubt. I’ve seen these before.
Tyler

there could be a pocket of air under that spot and could have collapsed
CHUCK CURRAN

YOU NEED TO DIG DEEPER AT LEAST 12FEET. LOOK FOR A METAL OBJECT. THE ODDS ARE BE FOR YOU GET 4 FEET DOWN. THE GOVERMENT WILL HAVE YOU REMOVED FROM THE SITE.
Where’s the water?

wouldn’t ice big enough to make that hole melt and leave behind noticeable damp soil or mud?

JM in San Diego CA

If it fell from a plane, it would leave a tell-tale smell. Anyone who has used an aircraft lavatory knows that the blue flushing water always smells “perfumey.” If no characteristic smell then no aircraft source.

Confirmation via a lab test for the human waste product creatinine is cheap and easy.

Sukie Crandall

I’m in Basking Ridge. We are on an ancient basalt flow topped by shale layers with cracks that date back to the flood from a huge Pleistocene lake which left behind swamps and mudflows that solidified. (It results in springs in many places and when the quarry was active those would shift with large blasts — kind of our own non-focused version of fracking.) A leak from a gas line which traveled along cracks could come up a distance away, or perhaps even more likely may be methane leaking from an old cesspool.

It would pay for the town to bring in some Rutgers geologists, probably. Natural gas explosions are pretty common things but for safety’s sake are worth investigation.

Silhouette

I’m leaning toward Sukie’s explanation….plausible.

niklu

A really bad attempt at a crop circle
jerry boucher

Could be a hoax
lol over this

A fart… What ? … You’re all thinking it.
GW

ice
RobbleRobble

The CHUD have escaped!!!!!

Aries4

LOL! Classic movie reference!

Ryan

1) A squirrel desperately trying to find his stash of nuts
2) Previous homeowner came back for something they buried

Guest1290

It would have to be an awful large squirrel to do that!

Uther

Marabunta army squirrels. Very dangerous.

CLASSIFIED

A secret military object (CLASSIFIED)
nygrump

vandalism?
Gregory

Could be a pocket of methane that naturally collected from a leaking gas line or buried building material. Best to have your property, especially your basement check for natural gas seepage.
Chris McDonough

Landshark.
Keith

Ice from a plane makes sense, but maybe some underground gas collected and spewed out.
Jerry

ice meteorite
Norm D

Blue ice from a plane which melted before the crater was found.

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Mysterious Hole In Basking Ridge Yard Puzzles Officials, Experts

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