Palacios, TexasFebruary 1959

On February 16, 1959, a resident of Palacios, Texas saw an unusual object in the night sky around 2:40 a.m. The witness described a bright red object glowing with what he called a "neonish" glow, moving at a speed comparable to a shooting star. According to his account, the object was roughly twice as long as it was wide, with rounded corners.

Within a few moments, the red object was surrounded by a cluster of small white lights, each about the size of stars but noticeably smaller. The red object then moved in a clockwise pattern through this cluster of lights, traveling at about one-third of the radius distance from the outer edge toward the center. After completing roughly seven-eighths of a circular path, it came to rest near the center of the light cluster, positioning itself close to the star Arcturus (which the witness called a "Comm=ndent of the group"). Then all the small lights vanished simultaneously.

The red object itself then changed appearance. Its length seemed to shift to become its depth, and within fifteen seconds it shrank until it disappeared from sight, as though vanishing into the distance. The witness watched through a window and noted the object's movement against the background of stars in the constellation Virgo.

In his detailed written correspondence with the Air Force, the witness made mathematical calculations attempting to determine the object's distance and speed, proposing figures in the thousands of miles. He also offered speculative theories about weightlessness and advanced propulsion, and quoted from a 1916 poem he had written about unknown methods of flight.

The Air Force's Project Blue Book evaluation concluded that the cause was "probably aberration of the light from the star Arcturus by the window screen, coupled with normal pulsating" effects. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 18 scanned pages.