Circle over Flatwoods, WV
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
I saw the craft go across the horizon. It appeared to be on fire, I first thought it was a plane going down. It landed near a farm.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center. Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
Ask for the records
What would the paper say?
Sightings from the Project Blue Book era (through 1969) live in Record Group 341 at the National Archives. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: National Archives and Records Administration · records window 1954-09-28 → 1954-10-15
From the same sky
Related entries
July 9, 2018 · 4:15 AM · LIGHT
Flatwoods, WV
Flatwoods, West Virginia. At approximately 4:15 am this morning, I happened to be looking out my bedroom window admiring the clarity of the early morning sky. No clouds in sight, so visibility was crystal clear. Because the sky was unusually clear, I was looking to see if I could locate the brightest star that was showing. One star caught my eye as it was a somewhat brighter than the surrounding stars. It was early morning and as such, my eyes weren’t focusing just then. I thought at first that this star was simply twinkling hints of blue and red mixed in with white. After a few minutes of mindlessly watching this star, I start to notice what I thought was movement. At first, I thought it was just my imagination, but I couldn’t take my eyes off from it. I reached for my glasses and once I had them on I could see that indeed this star was moving ever so slightly. I understand that the atmosphere can make stars appear to shimmer, so I didn’t become excited. After approximately 10 minutes of my continual star gazing, I noticed that this same star was beginning to move about more. The best way I can describe its movement is comparing it to a gnat flying about. This was not flying like an airplane and I considered that perhaps it was a helicopter, however I quickly ruled this out because there is no way a helicopter could make those kinds of maneuvers without crashing to the ground. I woke my wife up and asked her to confirm what I was seeing, and she observed this object as well. I decided to step outside to see if there was any sound, but I didn’t hear anything unusual. I took this opportunity to take in more of the sky to see if there were any more of the objects around. There were no others in my area of sight. We live in the mountains and there are lots of trees. I was looking NNE and I will approximate the object was at about 30 – 35 degrees above the horizon. I really have no accurate way of estimating the altitude. I was watching the object through a large gap between trees in my yard and continued to do so until the object was no longer in line of sight. This entire time was approximately 45 minutes. I concluded that the object was basically stationary over one area of the sky and due to the rotation of the earth, my view of the object became obstructed by the trees. I am very interested to see if there are any other reports about this incident.
September 24, 2014 · 11:55 AM · CYLINDER
Flatwoods, WV
The craft cylindrical, heading north/northwest. It flew above cloud level and had no wings. It was also traveling faster than a helicopter. It had no sound from engines of any kind. The object was at least 200 hundred feet in length. It was a shiny silver/white color.