Guntown, Miss., October 1949October 1949

On October 27, 1949, a woman in Guntown, Mississippi watched two connected oval objects moving across the sky. The ovals were shiny, like polished aluminum, and were fastened together by a flexible connector about one inch wide. They moved rapidly without making any sound. When they changed direction, she saw the connector shift from vertical to horizontal positions. After about a minute, one oval disappeared suddenly while the other continued south.

Within seconds, material began falling from the sky. It resembled ash but floated much more slowly and lightly than typical ash would. The woman soon noticed something stranger still: strands of web-like substance, similar to spider webbing but with a golden tint, descending in large quantities. Some pieces were thin single strands, while others formed clumps and tangles. The air filled with so much of it that it reminded her of a heavy rainstorm. She caught one small piece and found it looked like ordinary spider web. Within ten minutes, individual ovals began appearing one at a time from the east, moving faster than the connected pair had traveled. Each time an oval passed overhead, it would tilt and rotate partway. She also saw bright star-like objects shoot away from the ovals at high speed. As aircraft passed nearby, the ovals seemed to jerk or vanish. Debris continued falling throughout the afternoon until about 1:30 p.m. By the next morning, all the webbing had disappeared from the trees as if nothing had happened.

The woman reported a bitter taste in her mouth during the sightings and again on November 1, when she saw another oval in the sky. She was the only witness she could confirm, though her daughter observed some of the activity later in the day. The woman asked authorities not to publicize the incident, saying she did not want to trigger another flying saucer scare. She lived northeast of Tupelo, Mississippi, about 25 miles away, and asked if military rockets or similar aircraft had been tested in the area that day.

Military intelligence officials investigated the sighting and contacted the U.S. Weather Bureau. Officials there reported releasing weather balloons from McGhee-Tyson Airport in Knoxville, Tennessee (not Guntown) at four times that day: 0405, 1000, 1602, and 2203 hours. The balloons were approximately 30 inches in diameter and colored red, orange, yellow, and orange respectively. Records of wind patterns aloft on October 27 were included in the investigation file. However, the OCR text becomes unclear regarding analysis of whether balloons could account for the sighting.

The Air Force file does not state a final conclusion about what the woman observed. The case was forwarded from Third Army headquarters in Georgia to Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for their review. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 12 pages of microfilm.