Lexington, KentuckyJanuary 1953

A 13-year-old boy in Lexington, Kentucky saw an oval-shaped object in the sky on January 5, 1953, at 10:30 a.m. local time. The object appeared yellowish and resembled hot metal or an egg covered with luminous paint. The boy was leaving dancing school when he happened to glance upward and notice it.

The object grew gradually larger over the course of about 50 seconds, as if approaching the observer. Its light remained steady with no wobbling motion. The object started in the northeast, then moved slowly across the sky while maintaining a constant distance from the horizon. After about 30 seconds of this movement, it stopped in the north. It then slowly shrank in size and became vague in shape and color before fading out completely. This final phase took between 55 and 100 seconds. The observer noted that the moon was visible at the same time, but in a different direction, at a different height, and with a different appearance. The object's movement was nearly opposite to the wind direction.

The boy estimated the object was about 100 feet away and believed it was some sort of airborne machine. He circled his answers carefully on the Air Force questionnaire, appeared intelligent, and noted that he had never seen anything like it before. The OCR quality of the final investigation pages is too degraded to read clearly, though they appear to contain cross-references to other sightings and Air Force evaluations.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 12 pages.