Kearney, NebraskaNovember 1957

On November 5, 1957, a seed salesman driving near Kearney, Nebraska reported a remarkable encounter. The man said a flash of light stopped his car about three miles southeast of town. When he walked toward the source, he encountered a large object resting on the ground and was eventually invited aboard. Inside, he claimed to see four men and two women, all speaking German, along with various instruments and transparent walls. After about thirty minutes, the object rose about 150 feet and disappeared. The witness told his story to local police and the press, and it quickly became national news.

The Air Force investigation that followed was thorough. Researchers interviewed the man extensively, examined the site, collected samples of a greenish oil found on the ground, and consulted with psychiatrists. They also confirmed that a broken distributor rotor in the man's truck, a mechanical failure separate from the sighting itself, had caused his engine to stall. They found footprints near the alleged landing site, though newspeople had already trampled the area. Most tellingly, investigators noted that the witness gave remarkably detailed answers to all questions, often about facts he would have had no way of knowing, and that his story became more refined with each retelling. Psychiatrists who examined him concluded he was mentally unstable and likely enjoying the publicity he received.

The Air Force ultimately concluded the incident had no basis in fact. Officials determined that the sighting was a hallucination, motivated by the source's personal desire for attention and publicity. However, the file notes that the source came to believe his own account as true, a psychological phenomenon the investigators documented. The full case file, consisting of 76 pages held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.