Project Blue Book Case File
Deland, FloridaJanuary 1958
Summary
On the evening of January 8, 1958, someone in Deland, Florida, saw a round, fuzzy-edged object in the night sky that glowed with an orange and rosy tint, possibly tinged with yellow. The observer described the object as roughly the size of Mars as it would appear to the naked eye. The sighting lasted between two and five minutes.
The Air Force received a report on the incident and initiated an investigation. However, the case file shows sparse detail. Much of the witness questionnaire appears to contain handwritten answers that are difficult to read in the OCR (optical character recognition) transcription. The analysis sheet at the end of the file is similarly unclear in places, though it indicates the investigators considered whether the object might have been a balloon or some other conventional explanation.
The Air Force ultimately classified this case as "Insufficient Data for Evaluation," meaning the investigators did not have enough reliable information to reach a firm conclusion about what the witness had seen. The case remains unexplained based on the information preserved in this file.
The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, spanning 13 pages of scanned records.
Reported location
Deland, Florida
Date of incident
January 1958
State / country
FL / US
Page count
13 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unknown
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 31