10 Mi W of Oxford, N.C., January 1958January 1958

On the night of January 20, 1958, a truck driver named F. V. Hughes saw a bright white light near Oxford, North Carolina. The light was about as large as a car headlight or basketball, Hughes said, and it came down low to the road about one hundred yards ahead of him, hovering roughly one hundred feet above the ground. He stopped his truck and watched the object move from left to right for about five or six miles before it stopped.

After Hughes reported the sighting to Oxford police, two officers went to investigate. They saw the illuminated object positioned over the local radio tower, moving toward Henderson, North Carolina. Around 1 a.m., the object stopped and then began spinning. The officers noted that it seemed to move only one or two feet at a time, then slowly moved back toward them while continuing to spin. When the officers left to make their rounds downtown and returned later, the object was higher in the sky and moving from west to east.

A sergeant with the Oxford Police Department also observed the object, estimating it was seven or eight hundred feet off the ground. An Air Force interceptor director who interviewed witnesses on scene concluded that the object was simply a bright star in the east. The Air Force's official analysis agreed, stating that the planet Jupiter, which was in the reported position at the time, was the likely explanation for the sighting. The case file notes characteristics consistent with an astronomical observation, and Jupiter was identified as the probable object of the sighting.

The full case file, held by the National Archives, is reproduced below in its 8 scanned pages.