Boerne, TexasNovember 1957

On a November evening in 1957, a woman in Boerne, Texas looked out at her backyard and spotted something unusual hanging in the air. She described it as egg or football-shaped, yellowish-orange in color, and roughly the size of a room. The object appeared to be hovering at about the height of the nearby trees, roughly 200 feet away. When she called for her mother, the commotion inside the house apparently startled her, and by the time she returned outside moments later, the object was gone. She had watched it for less than five minutes, and it made no sound and showed no sign of movement the entire time.

The Air Force interviewed the witness and recorded her account. An officer later visited the sighting location and attempted to recreate what she might have seen. When he stood where the witness had been and looked toward where she said the object appeared, he found that the full moon was positioned roughly 20 degrees above the horizon and 45 degrees to the right of his line of sight. He noted that at the time of the sighting, clouds had covered the moon, but when he visited days later, the moon was visible and unobstructed. Based on this information, Air Force investigators concluded the object was likely a weather balloon (a rubber aircraft used to measure atmospheric conditions) that had been released nearby. They suggested that when sunlight or moonlight reflects off a spherical balloon against a dark sky, it can create the appearance of an egg or slightly oval shape, especially if the balloon has a yellow or tan-colored skin. The balloon may have drifted near the witness's location and remained stationary due to slack winds or a slow leak. However, the initial Air Force evaluation card marked this case as "unidentified." The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, 10 pages.