LEVELLAND

Opening

Over about three hours on the night of 2 to 3 November 1957, drivers on the roads around Levelland, Texas, called the police with the same story: a glowing object appeared on or near the road, their engine died and their headlights went out, and when the object left, the car worked again. By morning the Levelland police desk had taken about fifteen calls. The witnesses included farmhands, a college student, the county sheriff and the town's fire chief. The Air Force put it down to ball lightning in an electrical storm. The weather record doesn't show a storm.

Timeline

Late evening, 2 NovemberPedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz, driving a truck about four miles west of Levelland, see a flash in a field. A rocket-shaped object, Saucedo guesses 200 feet long, rises and passes low over them with a noise like thunder and a rush of wind. The engine and lights die. Saucedo phones the police when he reaches the next town. Officer A. J. Fowler on the desk doesn't take it seriously.

About 11:00 p.mJim Wheeler reports a glowing, egg-shaped object about 200 feet long sitting on the road east of town. His car dies, and the object lifts off. Jose Alvarez, eleven miles north, reports the same thing.

12:05 to 1:15 a.m., 3 NovemberTexas Tech student Newell Wright, farmer Frank Williams, Ronald Martin and James Long each call in with the same pattern: a glowing object, a dead engine, dead lights.

About 1:30 a.mHockley County Sheriff Weir Clem and deputy Pat McCulloch, out looking on Oklahoma Flat Road north of town, see a brilliant red oval light about 400 yards ahead, lighting up the pavement. Patrolmen Lee Hargrove and Floyd Gavin, behind them, see a streak of light. Minutes later the constable at nearby Anton reports a flash too.

About 1:45 a.mFire chief Ray Jones sees the object. His headlights dim and his engine sputters but doesn't stop.

5 NovemberA sergeant from the 1006th Air Intelligence Service Squadron arrives for Project Blue Book. He spends about seven hours in Levelland and interviews three witnesses: Saucedo, Wheeler and Wright.

Following weeksThe Air Force explains the sightings as ball lightning or St. Elmo's fire in a severe electrical storm, and the stalled cars as wet electrical circuits.

Key figures

Pedro Saucedo made the first report. Sheriff Weir Clem was the most senior witness and was searching for the light when he saw it.

J. Allen Hynek, Blue Book's scientific consultant, at first accepted the lightning answer and later said he was wrong. Atmospheric physicist James McDonald went back over the case and told Congress in 1968 that there had been no thunderstorm. Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel defended ball lightning.

Physical and documentary trail

The sources: the Levelland police log of about fifteen calls, Blue Book's file with its three interviews, the weather data, and later reviews by Hynek and McDonald. Nine or more of the people who called in were never interviewed by the Air Force.

Still missing: any photograph, any radar, and any vehicle checked by a mechanic at the time.

I was told that the Blue Book investigation consisted of the appearance of one man in civilian clothes at the sheriff's office at about 11:45 a.m. on November 5; he made two auto excursions during the day and then told Sheriff Clem that he was finished.

Things you might not know

• Sputnik 2 went up the same night. The Soviet Union launched the dog Laika into orbit on 3 November 1957, Moscow time, while Levelland's calls were still coming in. The country was already looking at the sky.
• Hynek changed his mind. He later wrote that there had been only a trace of rain and no lightning, and that there was no evidence ball lightning could stop cars and put out headlights.
• McDonald counted ten cars. He told the 1968 congressional symposium that about ten vehicles were stopped independently within a two-hour window.
• A hoaxer muddied it. On 5 November, Reinhold Schmidt in Nebraska claimed he had met German-speaking spacemen, and the press coverage blurred the two stories together.
• White Sands was next. At about 2:30 a.m. on 3 November, Army patrols at White Sands, New Mexico, reported a large, bright object near the old atomic test site.

Competing explanations

Ball lightning in a storm. The Air Force's answer. Ball lightning is real, though poorly understood. The problems: the weather record, including observations at Reese Air Force Base near Lubbock, shows overcast and light drizzle rather than an electrical storm, ball lightning is usually small and short-lived, and nobody has shown it can stop an engine.

Excitement and suggestion. Once the first report spread, ordinary engine trouble and lights could have been read into the same story. This struggles with the number of separate reports, some made before word could have travelled, and with officers who were searching on purpose.

An unknown object. Many independent witnesses, one repeated effect on vehicles, and an official explanation built on a storm that wasn't there.

Later life of the case

Levelland is the classic "vehicle interference" case, and a standard example of how thin Blue Book's investigations could be.

Finding

The data points to something real on the roads around Levelland that night: about fifteen calls, from people who didn't know each other, describing the same effect. The Air Force's explanation rests on an electrical storm the weather record doesn't show, and its investigation spoke to only three of them.

What still will not resolve: what stopped those engines. Nobody has offered a mechanism, ordinary or otherwise, that fits every report.