Stephenville residents report UFO sightings - Pilot and elected official among those who have seen strange object
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
STEPHENVILLE In the farming community of Stephenville, where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many think is a UFO.
Several dozen people in the town southwest of Fort Worth including a pilot, county constable and business owners insist that 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."
Though federal officials insist that 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 the object over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of it.
Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them that 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.
"It feels good to hear that other people saw something because that means I'm not crazy," Sorrells said."
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 aircraft from his base were in the area Jan. 8, when many sightings were reported.
Lewis said the object might have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and might appear orange because of the setting sun.
Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos said they had seen a UFO.
Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan, who said he isn't sure about the existence of UFOs, said that one night last week, he saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving rapidly across the sky.
"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."
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/15/0115ufo.html
