Something In The Sky... Or Something In The Water?

Several dozen people around the small north Texas town of Stephenville say they saw something VERY unusual in the skies last week... and they want to know what it was.

"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 local business owner and pilot Steve Allen. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."

Allen described the UFO as being a mile long, a half-mile wide, with several bright lights and eerily quiet. That matches accounts by other residents, some of whom add it was being trailed by fighter aircraft.

One resident has offered a reward for a photograph, or other visual evidence of the UFO.

Federal officials say there's a logical explanation for the January 8 phenomenon, according to The Associated Press.

A spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, which lies about 80 miles northeast of Stephenville, theorized what people saw was an illusion, created by two commercial airliners converging at a common point relative to the ground near sunset.

"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Major Karl Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you." Lewis added no fighters assigned to NAS-JRB Fort Worth were in the Stephenville area when the incident was reported; officials with two other area bases made similar statements.

Machinist Ricky Sorrells doesn't necessarily buy that explanation, saying he saw the metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture near his home in Dublin. He kept quiet initially, after the few friends he told made fun of him... but he came forward after reading about others' sightings in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.

"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said, adding he's seen the object several times. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."

Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan says he saw red and white lights moving fast across the sky, adding even with binoculars he couldn't make out the object the lights were attached to.

"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."

FMI: www.ufocenter.com