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A Stellar Productions Investigation by Bryce Zabel

Saucer in the Sky with Diamonds

Fifty years ago, John Lennon and May Pang saw a UFO outside their New York City penthouse apartment. He talked about it until his final days. (Part 1 of 3)

Bryce Zabel
Point of Contact
Published in
9 min readAug 8, 2024

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Graphic by Stellar — UFO by Harrington V. Skorupka — Lennon photo by Bob Gruen

Once Upon a Time in New York City

In the last days of August in the summer of 1974 — August 23rd, exactly — John Lennon and his secretary girlfriend May Pang said they saw a UFO outside their rented penthouse apartment at 434 E. 52nd Street.

Lennon put this claim in the liner notes of his upcoming Walls and Bridges album. He released a sketch he’d made immediately after the event. He granted interviews. And shortly before his death in 1980, he recorded a song lyric that said that there were UFOs over New York. He talked directly and publicly about the subject on multiple occasions. Privately, he told an even more personal story that proves to be a Rorschach Test about how you see John Lennon.

There’s been only a smattering of actual reporting about the August 23rd encounter, or even the broader Lennon/UFO connection. People tend to dismiss his sighting because there are so many other great cases and the obvious problem, Hey, it’s

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Point of Contact
Point of Contact

Published in Point of Contact

Remixing UFO/UAP news, history, culture, and analysis. Curated by Bryce Zabel

Bryce Zabel
Bryce Zabel

Written by Bryce Zabel

Writer/producer/host in features & TV. Creator, five primetime series. Ex: TV Academy CEO; CNN reporter; USC professor. Author/Expert: Beatles, JFK, UFOs.

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