Lincoln, NebraskaJuly 1958

On July 11, 1958, a woman in Lincoln, Nebraska filmed what she believed was an unidentified flying object. She shot the footage on a Brownie camera in bright sunlight, though she couldn't remember the exact lens settings. The film showed what appeared to be a light near an Air Force aircraft.

The woman kept the film private for nearly two years. She did not report it to authorities because her husband ridiculed the idea of UFOs, she wanted to avoid publicity, and she didn't know which agency to contact. That changed on March 21, 1960, when she learned that a Northwest Airlines plane had crashed near Evansville, Indiana, two days earlier under mysterious circumstances. One of the plane's wings had been found some distance from the main wreckage. Fearing her film might help explain the disaster, she called the Air Force and agreed to surrender it to an intelligence officer in her home in Indianapolis.

When Air Force analysts reviewed the footage, they found no unidentified flying objects. Instead, they concluded that the bright spots visible throughout the film were simply reflections of sunlight bouncing off objects inside the car in which the woman had been riding when she took the footage. This kind of internal reflection is a common problem when filming with a camera on a very bright, sunny day. The Air Force determined that the photographer had mistaken these photographic artifacts for a UFO. The original film was returned to the witness.

This complete case file, held by the National Archives across 10 pages of microfilm, shows the Air Force's conclusion that the sighting was neither UFO nor aircraft, but rather a photographic effect caused by excessive reflected light.