The Levelland UFO Case
I’ll be the first to admit (seriously, you can hear me say it on ARCAPALOOZA) that I have never been a UFO/alien kinda gal. My entryway into the paranormal as a child was through folklore, hauntings, and the occult. Those are my roots. But, Astonishing Legends (and by extension Blogstonishing) has been growing new paranormal branches. That being said, the more I research and enrich my knowledge of UFOlogy, the more I am beginning to realize patterns. And one of them? A helluva lot of alien sightings take place in the America South and Southwest. That brings us to today’s blogstonishing topic: The Levelland UFO Case
Picture this: you're in Levelland, Texas in 1957. Levelland is a small town of about 10,000 souls and is located in the flat, vast South Plains of Texas. You might not expect much to happen a few days after Halloween, but then November 2nd rolls around and that changes.
From the night of November 2 through the early morning of November 3rd…there wasn't just a UFO sighting. There were nearly a dozen. At least 10 UFO-related incidents, reports, and experiences were had that evening by residents across Levelland.
It all began around 11:00 pm (or, at least, that's the earliest report we have) when Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz, both farm employees, saw a huge, flying object all lit up fly right over the truck. But that wasn't all that happened. In addition to seeing this strange flying object, the UFO left the car dead. The headlights of the truck went out and the engine died. But, once the UFO had passed, the lights and engine came right back on.
Unsure of what exactly he had experienced, Saucedo decided to formally report the incident to the Levelland police force. And this would be the first call of several that night for the police department of Levelland.
Jim Wheeler called in a sighting to the police department. He had seen what he described as a brightly lit "egg-shaped" object ON the road (not the sky). As he approached the object, his headlights and engine also failed. Wheeler's car was a mere eight miles from where Saucedo and Salaz's car went out. After some time, the object flew back into the air, and when it was in the air and a bit further away Wheeler’s car returned to normal.
Due to these reports, Sheriff Weird Clem and Deputy Patrick McColloch decided to make the drive out to the stretch of 116 that had so much activity. They spent some time driving around, hoping to catch it and...they finally succeded at 1:30 am. It was then the Sheriff and Deputy experienced something they couldn't explain. In a report filed by clem they saw the egg-shaped aircraft that was "like a brillliant red sunset across the highway [that] lit up the whole pavement in front of us for about two seconds." Then, it was gone. But, this only enlivened the search to solve this mystery as the police department now had eye witnesses. Throughout the night, calls continued to role into the police department describiing the egg-shaped flying craft, dimming of lights, and the temporary stalling of car engines.
Because of the volume of events and the recorded reports, the Air Force was called into investigate. They decided that all the sightings were due to the rare occurrence of ball lightning. But, that's when one of Astonishing Legends' favorite UFOlogys, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, swooped in.
According to his report in later writings, he said, "I am not proud today that I hastily concurred in Captain Gregory's evaluation as "ball lightning" on the basis that I had been informed that an electrical storm had been in progress in the Levelland area at the time. That was shown not to be the case." Dr. Hynek didn’t tell him who had told him the incorrect information that an electrical storm was happening in Levelland at the time. Why had someone told him this? Was it an honest mistake? And if Dr. Hynek didn’t think it was ball lighting…what did he think it was?
And while the National Weather Service reports that “A portion of the [lighting] discharge may find its way into the vehicle's electrical system and may damage or destroy electronic components, potentially leaving the car inoperable.” But, it doesn’t discuss the ability to leave it temporarily inoperable and then simply go back to normal.
The mystery of Levelland remains unsolved.
The image depicts potential ball lighting, captured by Joe Thomissen and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Thanks to Grace for this blogstonishing suggestion!