What is the crashed alien object found in the woods in 'The Tommyknockers'?

The crashed alien object found in the woods in “The Tommyknockers” is a spaceship.

Writer Roberta “Bobbi” Anderson discovers a strange metal object protruding from the ground while walking near Haven, Maine. As she and her friend James Eric “Gard” Gardener excavate it, they realize that it is not ordinary wreckage or a natural object but part of a massive alien spacecraft buried for thousands of years.

The ship has a dangerous influence on Haven. An invisible gas released from it gradually changes the townspeople, giving them extraordinary inventive abilities while eroding their judgment, empathy, and humanity. The residents begin creating advanced devices without fully understanding how they work, reflecting the novel’s central warning about technological power without moral insight.

The spaceship is also connected to the novel’s larger threat. Gard eventually learns that the alien crew had been fighting and that the beings aboard the vessel used living organisms as energy sources. The object is therefore far more than a mysterious archaeological find: it is an active extraterrestrial technology capable of transforming an entire community.