Close Encounters of the Lone Star Kind
Pamela Colloff’s extra-terrestrial experiences.
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Government papers now indicate that the Air Force was experimenting at that time with V-2 rockets, nicknamed “foo-fighters,” hence the crashed experimental aircraft that the photographer was instructed to document. One unresolved question is whether the pilot was actually a man or a monkey; the latter would explain the rumor that the pilot was short in stature with extremely long arms.
Related Links: The New Mex Files Did a flying saucer and its cosmic crew crash-land near Roswell fifty years ago? This month, terrestrial tourists can entertain that alien notion. by Anne Dingus
1951: Lubbock, Texas
Before Buddy Holly put Lubbock on the map, the Lubbock Lights gave this Panhandle town national fame. On an August night in 1951, several college professors sitting outside on a porch saw a formation of blue lights fly quickly overhead. They waited to see if the lights would return, and later that evening, they observed the lights again. That same night, a Lubbock woman also spotted the blue lights as she was taking her laundry off a clothesline. The lights, she later told Air Force investigators, framed the tail end of an enormous, “winglike” craft. A few days earlier, an employee of the Atomic Energy Commission saw the same type of aircraft in Albuquerque—a “wing-shaped” object with blue lights at its base. By the end of August, there was another sighting of the object in Matador, Texas, about seventy miles north of Lubbock, as well as photographs of the blue lights taken by Texas Tech freshman Carl Hart, Jr.
Before the lights disappeared two weeks later, dozens of people in North Texas reported seeing blue lights darting from one end of the horizon to the other. An investigation into the phenomenon for Project Bluebook—a 1950s and ’60s Air Force study into the possible existence of UFOs—came up with two explanations for the sightings. One theory was that the lights were plovers, West Texas birds with shiny white breasts that could have reflected the city’s glow as they flew overhead; another theory was that the lights were actually a result of Lubbock’s newly-installed mercury-vapor street lamps that gave off a bluish haze. However, neither of these explanations accounted for the lights’ immense speed or their sudden disappearance.
The Air Force ultimately categorized the Lubbock Lights sightings under the inconclusive heading “unidentified,” making it one of the most famous—and widely witnessed—UFO incidents in history.
1957: Levelland, Texas
Not far from where the Lubbock Lights were seen six years earlier, residents of Levelland, Texas, reported ten UFO-related incidents during the course of several hours on November 2, 1957. The first close encounter took place around eleven o’clock in the evening when farm workers Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz saw a giant, brilliantly-lit object fly over their truck. As it passed overhead, the truck’s headlights and engine went dead, resuming to normal only once the craft had disappeared. Saucedo reported the incident to Levelland police, who received a call an hour later from Levelland resident Jim Wheeler. Eight miles from the original report, Wheeler said that his engine and headlights had failed as he approached a brightly lit egg-shaped object in the road. Once the craft had ascended into the sky and disappeared, Wheeler was able to restart his engine.
Sheriff Weir Clem and Deputy Pat McColloch drove along Route 116 searching for the glowing object when finally, at 1:30 a.m., they spotted an enormous, egg-shaped craft that looked “like a brilliant red sunset across the highway,” according to Clem. It “lit up the whole pavement in front of us for about two seconds,” he said, and then it disappeared. Throughout the night, the Levelland police department continued to receive calls describing a similar bright object that caused lights to dim and car engines to shut off.
The Air Force investigated, speculating that the incidents were examples of ball lightening. However, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force’s primary UFO investigator at the time, recanted this conclusion in later writings. “I am not proud today that I hastily concurred in Captain Gregory’s evaluation as ‘ball lightning’ [as the explanation for the Levelland sightings] on the basis of information that an electrical storm had been in progress in the Levelland area at the time. That was shown not to be the case,” wrote Hynek. “Besides, had I given it any thought whatsoever, I would have soon recognized the absence of any evidence that ball lightning can stop cars and put out headlights.” The Levelland sightings remain unexplained.
1975: Seguin, Texas
The world’s largest UFO organization, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), was originally founded in Illinois in 1969 after the Air Force abruptly ended Project Bluebook, its study of the possible existence of UFOs. Continuing where Project Bluebook left off, MUFON went about researching, investigating, and compiling reports of UFO sightings in an attempt to resolve the question of whether or not UFOs exist. In 1975, MUFON relocated to Seguin, where it resumed documenting UFO sightings, alien abductions, crop circles, and animal mutilations throughout the world by using the organization’s vast network of inve stigators.
Now considered to be the preeminent UFO authority, MUFON hosts an international symposium each year, publishes its own magazine and 312-page investigator’s manual, and is frequently called upon by writers from the X-Files and Unsolved Mysteries for script material. MUFON’s charismatic 76-year-old founder, Walt Andrus, and the organization’s vast resources—such as a museum filled with rare UFO photos, stacks of declassified government documents, and a database containing thousands of investigators’ methodically researched reports—have drawn everyone from German physicists to Hollywood producers to Seguin.
Related Links: Alien Contact Our fearless reporter survives a close encounter with UFO investigators. by Helen Thompson
1980: Dayton, Texas
On the night of December 29, 1980, on a remote road 40 miles outside Houston, restaurant owner Betty Cash, her friend Vicki Landrum, and Landrum’s 7-year-old grandson, Colby, were returning home after a night out when a large, glowing, diamond-shaped aircraft spurting flames descended from the sky and hovered above the roadway in front of them. When they got out of the car to take a closer look at the object, which made a loud roaring noise, they were soon forced to return to the car because of the intense heat emanating from the craft. Cash claimed that as she grasped her car’s hot door handle, her wedding ring burned into her hand. Soon thereafter, the mysterious aircraft flew away along with a swarm of black Chinooks, or military helicopters.
Cash, who had remained outside the car longer than the Landrums, was admitted to a local hospital as a burn victim. All three passengers manifested different symptoms of what appeared to be radiation sickness, such as burns, blisters, nausea, rashes, severe headaches, sore eyes, and hair and fingernail loss. Cash was later diagnosed with breast cancer and Landrum developed severe cataracts. ”I’ve never believed in UFOs, ” Mrs. Cash later told reporters. “I was the first one to laugh.” But, she added, “I was terrified. Now I’m afraid to look up.”
Two theories swirled around the incident: either the object was an experimental military device which had gone haywire on a test flight or, some speculated, it was a recovered alien aircraft which the Air Force was trying to fly. Cash and Landrum hired a lawyer, who filed suit against the government for $20 million in damages. The case dragged on in district court for several years and called upon the testimony of officials from NASA, the Air Force, and the Army and Navy, before being dismissed in 1986 because no governmental agency owned or operated any aircraft fitting Cash and Landrum’s description. To this day, there is no conclusive explanation of the night’s events.
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