Showing posts with label Ricky Sorrells. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ricky Sorrells. Show all posts
Thursday, July 10, 2014
The Stephenville Lights and the Men in Black
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There are times when there simply is no inspiration for writing this blog and other times when inspiration fills the air. I’ve been in something of a drought lately, but as I was looking at some of the information I had gathered on the Stephenville, Texas sightings of 2008, I found something interesting. Ricky Sorrells, who told the media including the Associated Press and CNN that he’d seen a huge, solid object during one of those sightings, also said that he had been intimidated by the military.
According to newspaper reports, including one of those filed by Angelia Joiner that was published in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, Sorrells said that a man identifying himself as an Air Force lieutenant colonel had called and practically demanded that Sorrells allow him to come out to interview him (Sorrells, in case the various pronouns have become confusing).
Sorrells, according to what he told Joiner, was less than enthusiastic about that and that’s when the discussion became heated. The caller, whoever he was, said, “Son, we have the same caliber weapons as you do but a lot more of them.”
Then, according to the newspaper and Joiner, Sorrells said, “So, I said if he was who he said he was, why didn’t he stop flying over my air space with all those helicopters. And he informed me that it was not my airspace – it was his. He told me if I’d quit talking about what I saw he would stop the helicopters.”
While I’m skeptical that the man who called was, in fact, an Air Force officer, and I found his overblown rhetoric somewhat offensive, I don’t know what to make of the next incident. Sorrells said that he had been in bed, asleep, when his dogs began to bark, which they didn’t do unless someone entered Sorrells’ property. Looking out his bedroom window, he saw a man standing at the top of his driveway.
Sorrells told the newspaper (meaning, I will assume here, Joiner) that he could see the man clearly, that he was in his late twenties or early thirties and he was wearing a heavy, “parka-like coat.”
Sorrells said that with the dogs making so much noise that the man must have known he’d been seen and then Sorrells thought that was exactly the point. The next day, Sorrells went out and searched the area. He found a bullet that was shiny, meaning that it hadn’t been out in the elements for very long and might have belonged to the man seen the night before.
There was speculation that what was involved here was Operational Security or OPSEC. This is a military term used to suggest that classified plans and missions stay classified until that mission has ended. Here, it would suggest that there had been something going on in the Military Operation Area near Stephenville, which is a fancy term to say the flight corridors used for military training. Personally, I can’t see any OPSEC priorities here. The mission, whatever it might have been was over and for witnesses to talk about what they had seen wouldn’t compromise much of anything. If the man who called Sorrells was actually military, and the man standing at the end of the driveway was military, then all they did was call attention to the sighting. Their best course of action was to ignore it and not bother the witnesses.
Was Sorrells called by someone who identified himself as military? I have no reason to doubt this, meaning he got the telephone call but not that he was military or acting in any official capacity. I will note that it is strange that only Sorrells had this experience. If he’d seen something different than the others had seen, then such action only called attention to it. Not the best way to keep the secret.
Was there a man at the end of his driveway in the middle of the night? Again, I have no reason to doubt this either. Was he military? I sincerely doubt it, for the same reasons as mentioned above.
There is one other aspect of this that bothers me. Sorrells said that he shined a light into the cockpit of one of the helicopters that had been bothering him since the sighting and the pilot threw up his hands to block the light. This doesn’t seem right to me. I would have thought the pilot would have turned the aircraft, raised the nose, dived, something other than putting his hands in front of his face. Why? Because he would need both hands to fly the helicopter and Sorrells didn’t mention a second pilot in the aircraft.
So, where does this leave us? I believe Sorrells, but I don’t believe that the caller, or the man at the end of the driveway were military. There is no reason for them to be there and no reason for them to attempt such intimidation. I do know of other cases in which others made these sorts of harassing calls and who made these sorts of appearances because they didn’t like what a witness was saying. I have found little evidence that such happens, except in a very few, notable cases. Here, I just don’t see it.
This is just another of those bizarre incidents that dot the UFO landscape. Maybe this was just another manifestation of the Men in Black, maybe was the Air Force trying to keep Sorrells away from the media, or maybe Sorrells just made it up for some reason. I favor the idea that it was some crank having a little “fun.” Anyway, it didn’t seem to spread out from there, and no real harm was done.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
UFO Fervor Has Spread Far Beyond Stephenville
By Matt Frazier and Bryon Okada
he Star Telegram
1-17-08
The Stephenville UFOs have gone beyond North Texas.he Star Telegram
1-17-08
Thanks to dozens of reports of a strange, silent object over the town about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, UFO stories have filled newscasts, newspapers and online reports around the world.
"Dozens in Texas Town Report Seeing UFO," read an online headline for The Washington Post.
"Multiple reports of UFO-like sighting in Texas town," proclaimed Canada's CBC News.
UFO photos were among the top Yahoo searches this morning, along with Katie Holmes and Prince William's girlfriend.
The reported sightings have become a catalyst on blogs and in chat rooms, triggering scientific and philosophical debates, religious inquiries, conspiracy charges and bad Texas jokes.
"It's amazing how this has taken on an international profile," said Kenneth Cherry, president of the Texas chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. "I've had calls from Japanese and British newspapers. I'm supposed to be doing Larry King Live on Friday."
All this attention is not enough, says one group in New York, which believes this should be a top issue for the presidential candidates.
But in Stephenville, a dairy town of 15,000, most people just thought the UFO sightings were fun.
'Interesting today'
A UFO is parked outside a Stephenville business.
"It's been interesting today," said Treva Thompson with the Stephenville Chamber of Commerce. "My son and some of his friends made helmets out of tinfoil and are walking around town."
City Secretary Cindy Stafford has been going about town in a green alien mask. Some high school students are making alien T-shirts. One automobile dealership put up a sign saying UFOs could be traded in there.
It's not that people are making fun of those who say they saw a UFO, said Sara Vanden Berge, managing editor of the Stephenville Empire-Tribune. With such a small population, the witnesses, including county Constable Leroy Gaitan, are too well-known.
It's just that aliens are a fun and welcome change from cowboys and rodeos.
"There are some people who are taking it very seriously," Vanden Berge said. "But there is a large group of people having a good time with it. They are just having fun with the idea."
Others across the country are also having fun with the idea.
Some of the comments on the Internet and airwaves over the past couple of days:
Why did the Stephenville resident cross the road? To get to the other UFO.
Is the UFO over Stephenville looking for Jewel and Tasty BBQ? (The singer Jewel has been connected with legendary rodeo competitor and Stephenville resident Ty Murray.)
President Bush has hired real aliens to get rid of the illegal human aliens.
Taking it seriously
Not amused by the jokes is Dennis Balthaser, UFO researcher and former director of Roswell's International UFO Museum and Research Center.
"Once again the media is not taking this seriously, and that makes it difficult to investigate," Balthaser said.
Supporting this idea is the Washington-based Paradigm Research Group, which dedicates itself to getting the federal government to acknowledge and disclose information about extraterrestrials on Earth. This week it renewed its long call for the mainstream media to take the issue seriously, saying it should demand answers from the presidential candidates regarding the issue.
The group says it has compiled 1,700 news accounts of UFOs since 1947.
"What you discover is the local and regional press covered the issue pretty straight," executive director Stephen Bassett said. "The phenomena is laid out. But when it comes to the top tier -- the major networks and papers of record in the U.S. -- they have not done their job."
The problem is obvious, says one responder to a news blog: The media is conspiring with the government to keep the existence of UFOs a secret.
One post from South Carolina offered a different idea: "I don't know y'all, but it seems to me like a tourist attraction scam."
Spiritual questions
Is God an alien?
Can a Christian believe in UFOs?
Aren't UFOs mentioned in the Bible?
Questions like these have become popular as some struggle to reaffirm their place in the universe.
That is as it should be, said C. Scott Littleton, professor of anthropology at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
"People have been seeing anomalous objects in the sky for millennia, but for the most part they -- and their occupants -- have been perceived as gods, demons," Littleton said. "Indeed, I suspect that most if not all of our religions evolved to 'explain' these otherwise inexplicable phenomena."
Believing or not believing in UFOs is not so much a concern, said James K. Walker, president of the Watchman Fellowship, an evangelical group based in Arlington that debunks cults.
What is a concern are those rare instances in which unexplained phenomena result in the formation of a religious group or cult that professes to offer spiritual guidance, then spins off -- for whatever reason -- in a destructive pattern. "When they go off the deep end, they can take a bunch of people with them."
He mentioned the 1997 case in which Marshall Applewhite, leader of the Heaven's Gate cult, persuaded followers to commit suicide so their souls could ride on a spaceship trailing Comet Hale-Bopp.
Telepathic channeling with aliens is a common feature of UFO-based cults, said Walker, who included several UFO cults -- Chen Tao in Garland, Armageddon Tim Ark Base in Weslaco, the Raelians of Southern California to name a few -- in his recent book, The Concise Guide to Today's Religions And Spirituality.
"Faith is a good thing," the "unapologetically Christian" Walker said. "The object of your faith is what makes all the difference."
Report a UFO
The Texas chapter of the Mutual UFO Network plans to begin interviewing witnesses at 1 p.m. Saturday in a meeting room in downtown Dublin near the Dr Pepper plant. To report a sighting, call MUFON State Director Kenneth Cherry at 817-379-0773 or fill out a report form at www.mufon.com.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Pilot Says He Can Explain Stephenville UFO Sightings
By NBCI.com
1-16-08
FORT WORTH, Texas -- A Fort Worth medical helicopter pilot said he knows what caused the strange lights that appeared in the sky near Stephenville last week.1-16-08
Chuck Mueller was flying a medical helicopter from a Fort Worth hospital, heading south just after sunset last Thursday. He said he saw unusual lights on the horizon near Granbury.
"We were maybe five minutes into the flight when we saw the lights come on, one little orange light, and then another one and another one in sequence across the sky," he said.
His description is similar to what a county constable and dozens of others in Stephenville had described seeing two nights earlier.
"And it was something that I'd never seen before," Mueller said. "And I looked at the medic and he looked at me, and we were like, 'What was that?'"
Muller, a former Army pilot in Iraq, said an explanation "kind of hit" him.
"I'll bet that was an airplane dropping flares, dispensing flares as he was flying along," he said. "It all makes sense. The color was right."
Stephenville is close to the Brownwood Military Operations Area, a major training area for fighter jets.
Other witnesses said they would like to believe Mueller's theory, but it doesn't answer all of their questions.
"But it doesn't explain these little lights," Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said. "And then the thing about it is just the speed."
They said the lights zipped across the sky at lightning speed.
"An airplane can't do that," Gaitan said. "A helicopter can't do that."
An Air Force spokesman at Fort Worth's Joint Reserve Base said there were no military planes at all in the area last Tuesday.
Stephenville UFO: The Initial Reports
Possible UFO Sighting
By ANGELIA JOINER
Stephenville Empire Tribune
1-10-08
Four area residents witness mysterious object, lights in Selden sky
Allen called it an unidentified flying object. And, because he's been a private pilot for more than 30 years, he has a little more experience judging air speeds and distances than most.
“We all flipped out,” Allen said. “I didn't sleep a wink last night.”
Allen was at the home of Mike Odom in Selden about 6:15 p.m. when they suddenly noticed flashing lights about “3,500 feet above ground level,” he said.
“The ship wasn't really visible and was totally silent, but the lights spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide,” Allen said. “The lights went from corner to corner. It was directly above Highway 67 traveling towards Stephenville at a high rate of speed - about 3,000 miles per hour is what I would estimate.”
Allen said the lights were not those of a normal aircraft. He said they were more like strobe lights, and while they were all watching, the lights reconfigured themselves from a single horizontal line into two sets of vertical lights.
“The two sets were approximately one-quarter of a mile apart,” Allen said. “Then they turned into dirty burning flames. The flames were not blue. They were white in color. About two seconds later it disappeared completely.”
Allen said they were all scratching their heads and talking about what it could have been, when approximately 10 minutes later, the object flew overhead again.
“This time it came from the west traveling east towards Glen Rose,” Allen said. “And it was about two or three miles south of 67, and two military jets, possibly F16s, were in pursuit.”
“I was asking, “Are you guys seeing that?” Allen said.
Mike Odom said he didn't have trouble sleeping but it was a “wild experience.”
“It's unexplainable,” Odom said. “It was something not natural; it was moving way too fast.”
Odom said he saw one other unexplainable object in the sky in 1978 when he was in Arizona.
“Back then something flew over with lights all around,” Odom said. “I think this thing bothered all of us, but it probably bothered Steve more because he's a pilot and he flies a lot.”
“It was neat,” Lance Jones said. “It was something. I've never seen anything like it before but it didn't scare me. I just figured it was military.”
Odom's wife, Claudette, said she was previously employed as a flight attendant.
“Lights were going up and down the side,” she said. “There was no sound, just the lights. It was moving so fast. It wasn't a plane. I know how planes move. Honestly, I think it was a UFO. It was so fast you couldn't have put your finger on it and move it fast enough to follow it.”
Allen said he has never seen a UFO until now, but he did suspect there was something to UFO stories all along.
“I was very surprised to finally get my eyes on one,” Allen said. “If anybody else saw this and got pictures I hope they will contact me.”
Allen said he has already reported the sighting to Washington, and is in the process of writing a report on the event.
Allen is the owner of L & S Enterprises and Texas Freight in Glen Rose. He can be contacted at 254-898-1117.
The group plans to return to Odom's house and keep an eye on the sky in the near future, hoping to see it again.
Mysterious Sightings Keep Locals Guessing
By ANGELIA JOINER
Stephenville Empire Tribune
1-11-08
By ANGELIA JOINER
Stephenville Empire Tribune
1-11-08
A number of area residents have come forward saying they also saw the mysterious lights witnessed by Steve Allen and friends Tuesday night in Selden.
“It was like nothing I've ever seen before,” comes up over and over in their descriptions of bright lights in the sky. Accounts have come in from various locations and a few of those brave enough to come forward are listed below with stories of their own.
Major Karl Lewis of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth (Carswell Field) believes he might be able to solve the mystery in a couple of days.
Allen said his phone rang all day Wednesday with people reporting to him that they had seen the strange lights in the sky.
David Jaquess
“I live 4.6 miles out on Hwy. 67. About 6:15 p.m. I saw something as I was turning in my driveway. I won't say it was a UFO but I will say it was UFL, meaning it was unidentified flying lights. They were real bright yellow and I thought I must be seeing the sun reflecting off a plane. I'm guessing they were five miles away from me. But, they were unusually bright like a welding arc being struck - it was that bright. I don't discount UFOs but I don't necessarily believe in them either. I got a call this morning saying there was story about a UFO in today's paper and it was out where I live. I immediately said, ‘Yeah, I saw it.' I was looking west/southwest.”
Dublin Constable Lee Roy Gaitan
“I was outside with my eight-year-old son, Ryan, when I saw lights. It was like nothing I've ever seen before. It was dark already. At first it was two red burning glows that went away and then came back on. I went inside to tell my wife. When I came back out I saw something like lights you'd see in a bar. My little boy and I counted and we came up with nine flashes and they were real spread out. But I couldn't see them attached to anything, just the lights. So I went to my pickup and got my binoculars to see if I could see a plane or something. Even with the binoculars there was no outline. It started moving towards Stephenville and moving so fast I had trouble following it with my binoculars. It covered a big area. It sounds crazy but we really saw what we saw. As a matter of fact I mentioned it to an officer in Stephenville and he called me up and said to get the Stephenville paper because I wasn't going to believe what was in it. I also went to the Dublin paper but they had no other reports on it so I just dropped it. But my little boy went to school the next day and told everybody all about what we'd seen.”
Anne Frazor
“I had just left the nursing home from seeing my husband. I was going down 914 towards Alexander. Just as I got to the hill at Alexander where Hwy. 6 crosses I saw them - the lights. It scared me. I thought two planes were about to collide. The lights were as bright as a school bus ahead of you but up in the air. They were certainly much closer to the ground than I would appreciate them to be. I looked in my mirrors and there were no reflections. Just as I got up to the top of the hill they were gone. It was about 6:40 p.m.”
James Hughes
“I was a navigational specialist in the Air Force and I don't know what it was that I saw while I was walking two friends to their car at my home. But as soon as I saw it I jokingly said to them, ‘Hey look - a UFO.' I saw two red lights acting unusual. There were two very bright red lights traveling in formation. By formation I mean they kept their positions respective to each other. They were so intensely bright that I realized they must be at a low altitude. But, there was no noise. The lights were not like a helicopter or a plane. I live near the courthouse, actually two blocks from it, towards the river. I was looking north. It was unusual.”
All Eyes On The Skies
By ANGELIA JOINER
Stephenville Empire Tribune
1-13-08
MUFON Texas Senior Field Investigator and Assistant State Director Steve Hudgeons said field investigators from Waco, Fort Worth, and Dallas will be on hand to interview witnesses and complete sighting reports. He said MUFON is interested in Steve Allen’s first hand account of intensely bright lights and military jets over the Selden community last Tuesday night as well as other accounts.
“I have read the papers and have been sent several e-mails from people that have heard of this sighting and it looks as if there are a good many people that have either seen this or have heard about it,” Hudgeons said. “I will bring down a team of investigators and we will do a mass interview and then do a later follow-up with a selected group.”
Hudgeons said it is the unusually high number of people that claim to have witnessed the event as well as the credibility of those involved that has prompted his organization to become involved.
Founded in 1969, the Mutual UFO Network, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation dedicated, through its volunteers, to resolving the scientific enigma known collectively as unidentified flying objects (UFOs), according to its Web site, www.mufon.com.
The world wide organization headquartered in Denver, Colorado has two publications; the monthly MUFON UFO Journal addresses all aspects of the subject, and The International UFO Symposium Proceedings offers a yearly in-depth analysis of the UFO subject by world-renowned researchers, according to their Web site. Each is available to MUFON members and the public.
Allen said he has received a barrage of phone calls from others witnessing the Tuesday night event as well as reports of military air traffic but also received calls from individuals describing similar accounts. The accounts include a woman that said she saw the same thing in 1967 and worked to solve the mystery with former Sheriff David Hale. But, she said no conclusions were ever drawn.
Allen said he has been speaking with a Hillsboro resident who wishes to remain anonymous but is offering a substantial reward for authentic local pictures or videos to assist with validation of the claim. Allen is the owner of L & S Enterprises and Texas Freight in Glen Rose and can be reached at 254-898-1117.
Hudgeons said he encourages anyone with photos or film footage to wait until he can view the material at the meeting before turning it over to anyone else.
“Even if someone says they are from MUFON, don’t turn it over,” Hudgeons said. “I feel that someone from a government entity will pose as MUFON and try to take them.”
Major Karl Lewis of Naval Air Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth (Carswell Field) reported Friday that no military aircraft from his establishment were in the area Tuesday night. When questioned about military air traffic in the Stephenville area he said there could be a number of reasons for that and most likely it’s because of training missions related to the Brady area.
“There were no F16s from this unit operating and no other pilots from our unit reported a UFO,” Lewis said.
He also said the jets could have been in the area but from a different base or they could have been F18s, which are similar in appearance.
Lewis said after reading newspaper accounts of what area residents saw he has a plausible explanation — something that he has witnessed himself in his 32 years as a pilot.
“I think it was a consortium of lights. It sounds like sun reflection of an aircraft traveling at high altitude,” Lewis said. “That can cause an intensely bright light like that. Sometimes you can’t look at it because it is so bright. As the angle of the sun changes, the color dulls because the sun is setting on the horizon and it’s hitting the aircraft at a different angle.”
Lewis said intense orange, red or white lights as well as other colors may be seen when this occurs. He also said it could have been natural light phenomenon or a visual illusion caused by natural atmospheric conditions.
Hypothetically, Lewis said, an object of the reported size traveling through the atmosphere would leave a catastrophic “sound signature or footprint.”
“An aircraft traveling that fast and at that low altitude would leave an approximate path of four miles wide of damage,” Lewis said. “Low and fast like what was described, would leave a path similar to that of a tornado - it’s a pressure differentiation.”
Another point, he said, was something that fast and low to the ground would create thermal heat, which would create a vapor trail and none was reported.
Lewis said he knows of a plane traveling at mach one speed at an altitude of 5,000 feet, which caused a cinderblock house to collapse, so he doesn’t believe what witnesses spotted was actually a craft of any kind.
(See Monday’s edition of the E-T for an eyewitness account of the Tuesday evening event in Cleburne. The witness first saw what he claims is a UFO in the Cleburne area in 1995 and will be interviewed on the X-Zone radio show in Canada Monday evening Jan. 14. He has lectured on UFOs and paranormal issues in Roswell, New Mexico and New York City.)
UFO Witnessed in Cleburne by Expert
By ANGELIA JOINER
Stephenville Empire Tribune
1-14-08
But the best part is Leigh witnessed the same event from Cleburne in the east-northeast sky and had already started documenting his account before he saw the Empire-Tribune article on Jan. 10.
“I sent him (McConnell) an email Tuesday night after my sighting, or two days before I was contacted by Councilman Murphy about the sightings there,” Leigh said. “It adds more credence to not only that of your people's sighting, but to mine as well!”
Leigh is well known for having filmed the June 11, 1995, daytime footage of a UFO over Cleburne. He said it is rated as one of the top 5 films of UFOs in the world and is extremely rare because it occurred in the light of day.
“My broad daylight footage could not be disputed, as I had first gone in person to the small Cleburne airport and ‘looked' at the flight log and times: no planes in the area at the time, then I called the FAA in Fort Worth, tape recording the call, as I spoke to the operations manager who admitted they had booked a ‘bogey' in the Cleburne area that ‘disappeared' off the screen after ‘x' minutes,” Leigh said. “He even asked me what it was! After we had talked, I told him that not only was I a freelance journalist, but that I saw/videotaped the UFO and recorded our call.”
Leigh has appeared on several television shows with the dramatic footage and his eyewitness account including “Unsolved Mysteries,” and gives lectures on the subject. He has authored a book on UFO sightings and his uncanny ESP ability titled Power Glide.
Leigh said before you can prove a UFO - you must first prove what it is not - so after the Jan. 8 sighting of what appeared to be a “large blue star that zipped off as quick as that,” he got busy. And busier still, when he glanced at the north-northeast sky and saw a jet aircraft at above 20,000 feet, “zooming in the direction that the blue star took.” Then he noticed another jet as he was peering into the west-southwest sky and it, too, was at least 20,000 feet, as it was leaving a trail, he said.
He said the first thing skeptics will say is that what you saw was a star, in particular, Venus.
“The moon is the size of a quarter with your arm fully extended,” Leigh said. “This object would be the size of a dime with arm fully extended which is 60 times larger than any star.”
But to quiet naysayers, he logged on to starpathways.com and researched Venus. Leigh found on Jan. 8 there was a new moon so that would mean a black sky.
“Venus would be due west and as evening progresses it sinks below the horizon,” Leigh said. “Sunset was at 5:38 p.m. It was after six in the evening so it was dark. It was cloudless, although a brisk wind out of the south. You've got to do your homework with this sort of thing.”
Many area residents have questioned what appeared to be an increase in military air traffic in the skies and Leigh documented that as well.
The next day Jan. 9 at 10:30 a.m. he documented four jets, “leaving ‘chem trails' and making zigzagging patterns in the cloudless bright blue sky” and took photos.
“Until you see something as dramatic as a UFO; you will never be the same again - ever,” Leigh said. “I always suggest to those who have seen them for the first time to read a few of my articles, which gives some idea of how to prepare a report and how to go about ‘proving' what they saw as opposed to what else ‘it' or ‘them' could have been.”
Leigh's web site is http://jasonleigh.org.
The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) has scheduled a meeting for 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19, at Erath County Dairy Sales & Livestock Commission located on U.S. Highway 377/67 South. The public is invited and field representatives will conduct interviews and complete sighting forms. Leigh said he would be in attendance.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Dozens in Texas Town Report Seeing UFO
By ANGELA K. BROWN
AP
1-14-08
STEPHENVILLE, Texas (AP) — In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.AP
1-14-08
Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."
While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.
Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."
Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.
Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.
"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."
Officials at the region's two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.
One man has offered a reward for a photograph or videotape of the mysterious object.
About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.
Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.
Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said that he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving fast, but that even with binoculars could not see the object to which the lights were attached.
"I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it," Gaitan said. "I think it must be some kind of military craft — at least I hope it was."