Fifty-four years ago, something happened in the small town if Levelland in the Panhandle that made national news, yet is still unexplained today.

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The event happened a few years after the Korean War, at a time when relations between the East and West had disintegrated into a 'cold war'. Nuclear attack drills were practiced in classrooms where every child new the ‘Duck and Cover’ song they had learned from instructional 16mm films.

On a chilly winter night on November 2, 1957, some of the strangest and best documented cases of UFO landings, took place in Levelland, Texas. That night, A.J. Fowler was manning the police call line when he began receiving calls from fifteen different people reporting strange lights in the sky and unknown craft landing on nearby roads.

The sightings began at 11:00 PM, some four miles west of town. Pedro Saucedo and friend Joe Salaz were driving in a pick-up truck, and observed a brightly lit cigar-shaped object heading in their direction.

 

200 Foot Long Object:

Pedro's truck began to fail, the engine cut out, and the electrical system went dead. The truck was allowed to roll to a stop. Pedro and his friend recalled the unknown object as being 200 feet long. In the small town of Whiteface, he called in what he had seen to Fowler, who thinking he was talking to a drunk person, dismissed the call.

 

Brightly Lit Egg-Shaped Object:

At 11:45 PM, Fowler gets his second call of the night. Near the small town of Whitharral, located four miles east of Levelland, a man encountered an egg-shaped object, this time the object was sitting in the middle of the road. The object was brightly lit. The man left his vehicle, watching the object from a safe distance. Shortly, the UFO slowly raised from the ground to an altitude of about 200 feet, and disappeared. His vehicle had also stalled, but restarted after the UFO was gone.

 

Object Lands on Road:

At 12:00 AM, the third call of the night comes in. A man traveling about 11 miles north of Levelland sees a UFO sitting on the road. His vehicle is disabled. He sits for a time watching the unknown craft. Before long, the silent object lifts up, and disappears into the night. The man's car immediately fires up again. He drives to the nearest telephone, and calls in his report.

 

Object Sitting on Road:

At 12:10 A.M, Texas Tech freshman Newell Wright was driving 9 miles east of Levelland when his engine failed. The nineteen-year-old got out of his car, popped open the hood, and tried to see if he had an electrical problem. He then saw an unknown object landed on the pavement a small piece down the road. He estimated the object's length at 125 feet. It was a bluish-green color. It soon rose up and disappeared.

 

Fourth Object on Road:

Only five minutes later, at 12:15 AM, another driver near Whitharral, encountered an unknown object in the middle of the highway. His vehicle also was disabled. Like the other drivers, after the object left, his vehicle returned to normal. After a fourth call reporting a landed object in the middle of the road, patrolman Fowler began to worry, and called patrol cars in the Levelland area to be on the look out for this object.

 

Orange Ball Lands on Road:

At 12:45 AM, Fowler received yet another report from the general area of Saucedo's initial sighting. This time the driver sees an orange ball-like object coming toward him. He reported that the UFO made a soft, quiet landing on the pavement of the road. He also related a strange phenomena-the orange color of the object changed to a bluish-green color as it landed on the highway. He could also estimate the length of the object at about 18 feet, as it covered the entire width of the road.

 

200 Foot Long Object Seen Again:

There would be about a 30 minute lapse in the reports with the next one coming in at 1:15 AM. A truck driver from the city of Waco, Texas, made the call. He tells Fowler that driving northeast of Levelland, he saw a large unknown object which glowed in the dark sky. The man sounded frightened on the phone. The trucker noted that the object was about 200 feet long, which agreed with the initial Saucedo report. The man's truck, temporarily disabled by the object, roared back to life when the object left his area.

 

Two Policemen See Object:

Up until 1:30 AM, all of the reports received by Fowler had been from civilians. That would change when he received a report from two lawmen, about 3-4 miles out of Levelland. Sheriff Clem and Deputy McCullough testified that they observed a "large, glowing object," pass across the highway in front of them. The had never seen anything quite like it. They had been monitoring Fowler's reports on the positions of the callers, and tracking the object. The officers stated that the entire highway was lit up below the sun-like object. - Billy Booth* (1957-The Levelland, Texas, UFO Landings)

So, for reasons that still remain unexplained, for 2 1/2 hours on the night of November 2, 1957, the city of Levelland, Texas was visited by unknown flying objects that landed on the roads of the city and surrounding areas.

The days following the sighting brought a flurry of newspaper reporters and other investigative parties. When the US Air Force eventually arrived in Levelland, they did a cursory investigation and dismissed the events of that night as...ball lightning.

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These were not the first strange, other-worldly events to happen over the South Plains of Texas. Just six years before there was an incident that most people know as, The Lubbock Lights.

Watch video about the Lubbock Lights:

Could these have been just ball lightning, or could these incidents have been something else: The Military testing new advanced aircraft? Reece AFB, located between Lubbock and Levelland - just 6 miles west of Lubbock and around twenty miles directly east of Levelland - had it's mission set as flight training by the US Air Force. Possibly, but then there is the unsettling events that took place about 8 months later that made the entire world take notice.

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It was a time of high anxiety in Washington DC, as formations of UFO's flew over the nation's capital and hundreds of reports from citizens flooded in, from July 12 to July 29, 1952. There is even footage of these craft flying over The Nation's Capital! Remember, this was during the Cold War, it was ominous, because if the Ruskies had this type of tech, we were done for!

Watch the UFO over Washington DC. Film Footage from 1952:

Watch the video analysis of these and other UFO investigations which also included sightings from as far south as Odessa, Texas.

Have you ever seen or photographed an Unidentified Flying Object or had an encounter with one?

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