Ringgold, La., April 1957April 1957

On the morning of April 25, 1957, a civilian driving near Ringgold, Louisiana reported seeing a large, crescent-shaped object glowing bright red or scarlet descend slowly from the sky into a grove of trees. The man had been driving in heavy rain around 2:30 a.m. when he noticed the object ahead of him at approximately 45 degrees elevation. He watched it drift downward for about 25 minutes before it disappeared while he was trying to get help from a nearby house. According to his description, the object was as large as a four or five-room house and covered 12 to 15 trees when it settled on the ground roughly half a mile away.

The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations conducted interviews and collected weather data in early May 1957. The witness, a store manager from Ruston, Louisiana, confirmed his account and said he was certain about what he had seen. Investigators visited the reported landing site and interviewed nearby residents, including a family whose house the witness had approached. No other eyewitnesses came forward. A search of the area on May 9 found no physical evidence. The witness's own follow-up attempt to locate the site after the initial sighting also turned up nothing.

Air Force weather personnel suggested the object might have been a weather balloon struck by lightning and illuminated by the storm, but investigators noted that the U.S. Weather Bureau was using helium, not hydrogen, in their balloons at that time, making ignition impossible. A radiosondes (weather balloon) release had been made at 2:34 a.m. that morning, but it followed a normal descent pattern. The Air Force investigation closed without reaching a definitive conclusion about the sighting.

The case file remains classified as an unidentified object in Air Force records. The complete investigation file, consisting of 11 pages, is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.