1977: Security guard sees oval UFO with bright headlights

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THINK ABOUTIT UFO SIGHTING REPORT

Date: October 1977

Sighting Time:

Day/Night: Night

Location: Walcott, Iowa

Urban or Rural: Rural

Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light) Point or extended luminous source observed at night.

Duration:

No. of Object(s): 1

Size of Object(s):

Distance to Object(s):

Shape of Object(s): Oval

Color of Object(s): a pair of bright “headlights” flashing

Number of Witnesses:

Source: Moline Daily Dispatch (Moline, IL), Jan. 7, 1978

Summary: An 18-year-old woman saw a pair of bright “headlights” flashing from an oval object moving silently through the skies over Walcott, Iowa, where she worked as a security guard. Her radio and walkie-talkie stopped working, and cows and crickets in a nearby field stood silent. A television in a nearby farmhouse went blank, she learned later. 

Full Report

“Area ‘encounter’ defies explanation”
By Stacey Burling

She’s been laughed at, harassed and ridiculed, but the 18-year-old Davenport woman knows what she saw on that crisp, clear night last October. She declines to be identified for fear of jeopardizing future employment opportunities. What she saw, she says, was a pair of bright “headlights” flashing from an oval object moving silently through the skies over Walcott, Iowa, where she worked as a security guard.

GLIDING TOWARD HER as she manned a watchtower at the town’s French and Heeht plant, the disc obscured a flashing red beacon light on a grain elevator. Her radio and walkie-talkie stopped working, and cows and crickets in a nearby field stood silent. A light-sensitive mercury vapor lamp about 100 yards away. the woman went dark. A television in a nearby farmhouse went blank, she learned later.

“At first I wasn’t sure what it was, and I just sort of stood there and watched it,” she said.

She thought it was a helicopter until she realized it made no noise. Terrified, she stood frozen outside the guardhouse and watched, Then she went in search of other witnesses. When she returned, the object was gone.

BUT THE WOMAN says few people have believed her story. “They look at me like I’m nuts,” she says. “It’s like somebody telling you that they’d seen a green elephant.”

Her boss1 told her to report the incident to police, but she says the Davenport policeman in charge and three other officers “laughed hysterically” when she told her story. They did, however, call the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, which connected her with DeGraw. Despite the widespread disbelief, she’s still convinced the sighting was not a mistake. “I know what I saw,” she says. “I’m not blind.”