On January 31, 1978, three young boys were "bootskating" on the ice-covered playing field of the Montvale Memorial Elementary School in Montvale, New Jersey. Eddie Hargrove, his brother Michael, and their friend John Cummings watched as a flying object approached and hovered overhead.
Since it remained stationary for almost five minutes, the boys got a good look at the object. It was square with rounded corners and appeared to have a dome on top. It had a yellow light at each corner and a light underneath, which cast a red beam that stopped just short of the ground.

Eddie, Michael, and John quickly realized that they were seeing something strange. As the flying object moved away, they became frightened and ran to the dugout by the school's baseball diamond. By then, the object had disappeared. Before they could discuss what had happened, they noticed what looked like a man in a yellow jogging suit across the road from the field. Michael thought it was a neighbor who frequently jogged in the evening.

"Mr. Johnson," Michael called to the man, "did you see that UFO?"

Immediately the man turned toward the boys, and Michael gasped. The man was not Mr. Johnson. His head was shaped oddly, and had a crease down the forehead; he looked more like a hawk than a man. Then, before he could answer, ten other creatures, all in yellow jogging suits, joined him. Each one was bald and had large, dark, square places where his eyes should have been; their skin was light yellow. They walked stiffly, like Nazi soldiers, according to John. "Have you heard of Hitler's army?" John later asked a UFOlogist who interviewed him. "You know how they walked kind of stiff, with their arms straight? Well, that's . . . how they looked."

But the joggers weren't the only strange thing that the boys saw after the UFO. All three noticed that the surroundings had grown eerily silent. They also smelled the odor of burning sulfur.

Mustering their courage, they left the dugout to get a better look at the Yellow-suited creatures. Some were walking back and forth, while others headed down a nearby road. Then the boys noticed another figure - a woman, they believed.