Documents / FOIA release

Sighting of Unconventional Flying Object

Central Intelligence Agency · 1955-11-08 · 3 pages · text by GLM-OCR

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1. All tickets and reservations for us were arranged by the trip from here to being part of our itinerary approved by the officials. We originally were scheduled to depart from here in early afternoon on 4 Oct 35 but due to a charge in train schedules we were delayed and actually departed on a later train which had better accommodations. Departing from here at about six / six o'clock, we traveled south at a speed of 25-30 mph, reaching before dark. After stopping at here, our direction of travel changed from south to west. At 7:10 o'clock exactly ten minutes after leaving and 15 or 20 minutes before our arrival at the station, we reached one of the party who was in an adjoining department rushed in and exhaled. "I saw it! I just saw a flying saucer!" We had been talking and had not looked outside for some time. When we turned our attention to the window, we did not see anything unusual as the light was on in the department and it was twilight outside.

2. We turned the light off as quickly as possible. At this time, I saw a shadow form above the horizon to the south. Its profile was not clearly outlined against the sky but appeared to be shaped like a partially inflated balloon with a slight done on top. When I first saw it, it was off the ground and rising rather slowly in a vertical direction. There were two sources of light connected with the object, a white light on top and on the perimeter, a glow which was about the same color as an aircraft engine exhaust, white with a trace of pink. I have no estimate of its distance from us, possibly 1-2 miles. From this perspective it appeared to be about the size of a rather stubby for fighter aircraft. It continued to rise vertically with the glow moving slowly around the perimeter in a clockwise direction giving the appearance of a pinhead. When it reached an altitude of 10-15 degrees from the horizon, the spinning stopped, the glow remaining fixed on the side away from us, and it then moved toward us at tremendous speed passing over the train. I would estimate that it was much faster than a jet plane doing a fly-by. The light on top disappeared as it came toward us. The object did not seem to change size to any great extent as it came toward us. My viewing position at the window, incidentally, was approximately six feet above the level of the railroad track. I am six feet tall and I remember that once while standing beside the train my head came up to the bottom of the window. When I was viewing the object I was in a stopped position and looking out of the bottom of the window.

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 3 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.