DELPHOS

Opening

At about 7 p.m. on 2 November 1971, sixteen-year-old Ronald Johnson was doing chores on his family's farm near Delphos, Kansas, when he saw a mushroom-shaped object about nine feet across hovering a couple of feet off the ground, lit up in several colours and making a sound like an old washing machine.

When it left, its light briefly blinded him. His parents came out in time to see a light in the sky and a glowing ring on the ground where it had been. The ring's soil wouldn't absorb water for months. It's one of the most-studied physical trace cases in UFO history.

Timeline

2 November 1971, about 7 p.mRonald Johnson sees the object near the sheep pen, about 25 yards away. It rises and leaves. He tells his parents, Durel and Erma Johnson.

The same eveningThe family sees a glowing ring on the ground and a glow on nearby trees. Mr and Mrs Johnson touch the soil and say their fingers go numb.

November 1971Ottawa County Sheriff Ralph Enlow, his undersheriff and a state highway patrolman inspect the ring. They describe it as shaped like a doughnut: completely dry, with mud inside and outside it.

4 December 1971Investigator Ted Phillips, who worked with J. Allen Hynek, makes his first visit. The ring shows up as a circle of snow that hasn't melted. Underneath, the soil is dry to a depth of about twelve inches. He takes samples.

Following monthsThe ring's soil stays dry through rain and snow while the ground around it is wet. Plants don't grow in it.

1970sSamples are analysed by several labs, including work by chemist Erol Faruk, who finds an unusual organic coating.

1998 and afterFurther samples are analysed, including by chemist Phyllis Budinger. They find a coating of calcium oxalate, calcium carbonate and a humic substance, probably laid down in water, with no sign the soil was heated. It is unusual, but it doesn't point to any particular source.

Key figures

Ronald Johnson is the only witness to the object at close range.

Durel and Erma Johnson saw the ring and the light, and reported the numbness.

Ted Phillips, a trace-case investigator, documented the site and made Delphos famous in UFO research.

Physical and documentary trail

What exists: photographs of the ring, the sheriff's and local press accounts, Phillips's reports, and several lab analyses over the decades. This is more physical evidence than almost any other landing case.

The analyses agree the soil was coated with something that made it repel water. They don't agree on what caused it.

Things you might not know

• The numbness spread. Erma Johnson wiped the glowing material off her fingers onto her leg, and her leg went numb too. Her fingertips stayed slightly numb for about two weeks.
• The snow drew the ring. A month later, snow melted everywhere except on the ring, which made it easy to see and photograph.
• The coating is only a few percent. The water-repelling material made up about 2 to 3 percent of the ring soil by weight, and still worked decades later.
• The soil was never heated. Whatever made the ring, the lab work found no sign of burning or baking.
• Ronald had sore eyes. He reported sore eyes and headaches after the light blinded him.

Competing explanations

A landed object. Johnson's sighting and the ring appearing the same night point to the craft leaving the trace.

A fungal or microbial ring. Some soil organisms form rings and produce water-repellent layers. Sceptics have argued the ring was a biological growth, possibly around the base of a circular feeding trough, that was there before that night and noticed only afterward.

A hoax. The family could have made the ring. Nothing in the analyses points to a chemical that would produce this effect easily.

Later life of the case

Delphos won a prize from the National Enquirer's UFO panel in the 1970s and remains a standard example of physical evidence in UFO books. The soil samples have been re-analysed several times since.

Finding

A single witness saw an object, and the family found a ring that the soil record shows was physically unusual. The ring is real. Whether the object made it, or a feeding trough and fungus did, the analyses haven't been able to settle.

What still will not resolve: whether the ring existed before 2 November 1971.