Texas is a big state with a lot of sky. And something about all that sky seems to attract things that do not belong there. The state has one of the highest concentrations of reported UFO sightings in the country, and some of those sightings are not easy to dismiss. They involved multiple witnesses. They were documented in official records. Some left physical evidence. And decades later, none of them have been satisfactorily explained.
The Aurora Crash of 1897
Long before Roswell, there was Aurora, Texas. On April 17, 1897, residents reported that an unknown flying object struck a windmill on the property of a local judge and crashed on his land. The pilot, described in the Dallas Morning News two days later as "not of this world," did not survive. The townspeople buried him in the local cemetery with Christian rites. Investigators who examined the site decades later found unusually high concentrations of aluminum in the soil. The grave marker was removed by unknown persons at some point in the twentieth century. Nobody has ever explained who took it or why.
The Lubbock Lights, 1951
On several nights in August and September of 1951, residents of Lubbock watched formations of lights move silently across the sky above the city. The formations were described as V-shaped, containing between twenty and thirty individual lights, traveling at speeds that observers found difficult to estimate. A Texas Tech professor photographed the lights. The United States Air Force conducted a formal investigation and ultimately classified the case as unidentified in their official records.
The Levelland Incident, 1957
On the night of November 2nd, something happened on the roads around Levelland that frightened a significant number of people. Multiple drivers, at different times and locations, reported encountering a brightly lit egg-shaped object hovering above the road. Each time the object appeared, the driver's engine died and the headlights went out. Each time the object moved away, the car restarted on its own. The Levelland police department received fifteen calls in a single night. Witnesses included police officers and the town's fire chief.
The Cash-Landrum Incident, 1980
This is the one that is hardest to set aside, because people were hurt. On December 29, 1980, Betty Cash, her friend Vickie Landrum, and Vickie's seven-year-old grandson Colby were driving near Dayton, Texas, when a massive diamond-shaped object appeared above the road, shooting flames downward and radiating intense heat. All three suffered what doctors described as symptoms consistent with radiation exposure. Betty Cash was hospitalized multiple times in the years that followed. The witnesses counted twenty-three military helicopters surrounding the object as it rose into the sky. Cash and Landrum sued the United States government. The case was dismissed. The government denied owning any aircraft matching the description.
The Stephenville Lights, 2008
In January 2008, dozens of residents in and around Stephenville reported seeing a large, silent object crossing the sky at speeds incompatible with any aircraft they had ever seen. Radar data later confirmed that an unidentified object without a transponder was present in the airspace at the exact time witnesses reported seeing something. The military initially denied having any aircraft in the area. They later revised this position without fully explaining the contradiction. The radar data is still there. The witness accounts are still there. And the explanation, official or otherwise, is still not.