A dossier-style reconstruction of the Jayess, Mississippi, close encounter of February 5, 1977, where six adult witnesses from the Alexander and Cothern families observed a grey, domed, dish-shaped craft with red rim lights hover in silence at approximately 50 yards.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTING REPORT
1977 Jayess Mississippi UFO Sighting: Six Witnesses Detail Close Encounter
On the night of February 5, 1977, a dish-shaped craft with red lights at sixteen-foot intervals zoomed toward the Denver Alexander home near Jayess, Mississippi, with a roaring noise — then stopped dead at fifty yards, hung motionless and noiseless while six adults stared in disbelief, and vanished without a trace. The sighting was corroborated independently by neighbors across a field who reported seeing the same object, and it occurred during a documented regional UFO wave that had already produced a Madison County law enforcement sighting two days earlier. Published in the Tylertown Times on February 17, 1977, the Jayess case represents one of the strongest multi-witness close encounters in the Mississippi record — six named adult witnesses, a localized newspaper investigation, and a craft that demonstrated the ability to transition instantaneously from high-speed approach to silent hover.
February 1977 Mississippi UFO Wave:
The Jayess sighting was part of a documented regional concentration of UAP activity across Mississippi and Louisiana in late January and February 1977. Related events include the Madison County patrol car encounter (February 10), the Chalmette and Yscloskey sightings in Louisiana, and multiple reports from the Ruth-Jayess corridor received by the Brookhaven Municipal Airport.
Date: February 5, 1977
Sighting Time: Night
Day/Night: Night
Location: Jayess, Mississippi (two miles west toward Pricedale)
Urban or Rural: Rural
No. of Entity(‘s): None observed
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: CE-I (Close Encounter I) Observation of an object in close proximity to the witness (i.e. within 500 feet)
Duration: Several minutes (long enough for the Cothern family to stop their car, alert the Alexander family, and for a telephone call to be made while the object was still visible)
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): A grey dish-shaped craft with red lights at approximately sixteen-foot intervals around a rim and a smaller dome at the top. Capable of roaring high-speed approach followed by instantaneous silent hover.
Shape of Object(s): Inverted dish with a dome on top
Size of Object(s): Large — red lights spaced at approximately 16-foot intervals around the rim suggest a significant diameter
Color of Object(s): Grey body with red lights on the rim
Distance to Object(s): Approximately 50 yards at closest approach
Height & Speed: Approached at high speed with a roaring noise; hovered motionless and silent at close range; departed instantaneously without visible movement
Number of Witnesses: 6+ adults (Mrs. Denver Alexander, Eddie Alexander, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cothern, Mr. and Mrs. Darwin Alexander; additional neighbors confirmed the sighting independently)
Special Features/Characteristics: The craft demonstrated an ability to transition from a roaring, high-speed approach to instantaneous silent hover — a velocity-to-zero transition with no deceleration arc visible to the witnesses. A dome was visible at the top. Red lights were evenly spaced around the rim. The departure was described as instantaneous disappearance — no visible acceleration, no sound, no directional movement. A pilot at Brookhaven Municipal Airport confirmed receiving multiple UFO reports from the Ruth-Jayess area and personally witnessed an object dodge two passing jets in the presence of 12 to 15 other witnesses.
Case Status: Unexplained
Source: Tylertown Times (Tylertown, MS), February 17, 1977; Brookhaven Leader-Times
Summary/Description: On February 5, 1977, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cothern observed an unusual craft from their vehicle on a rural road near Jayess, Mississippi, and stopped at the Denver Alexander home to alert the family. Mrs. Denver Alexander, her son Eddie, and the Cotherns observed the object from the Alexander yard at approximately 50 yards distance. It was grey, dish-shaped with a dome, and had red lights at 16-foot intervals. The craft approached with a roaring noise, stopped abruptly, hovered silently, and then disappeared instantaneously. Mrs. Darwin Alexander and her husband observed the same object from their home less than half a mile away after receiving a telephone call from their sister-in-law. Neighbors across a field independently confirmed the sighting. A pilot at Brookhaven Municipal Airport reported multiple UFO calls from the Ruth-Jayess area and personally witnessed an object dodge two jets.
Related Cases: 1977: Flora, MS — Deputy Creel CE-I | 1977: Louisiana UFO Flap — Yscloskey | 1973: The Pascagoula Incident
Detailed Report
The Jayess sighting of February 5, 1977, occurred during one of the most active periods of UFO reporting in Mississippi history — a concentrated wave that produced multiple independent sightings across the state’s central and southern corridors within a span of days.
The event began when Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cothern, driving on a rural road approximately two miles west of Jayess toward Pricedale, observed an unusual object and pulled over at the home of Denver and Mrs. Alexander. Eddie Alexander, the Alexanders’ son, joined the Cotherns and his mother in the yard to observe the object. The craft was at an estimated distance of 50 yards — well within the Close Encounter threshold of 500 feet.
Four adult observers at the Denver Alexander home described the object consistently: grey in color, shaped like a dish turned upside down, with a smaller dome visible at the top. Red lights were arranged at approximately 16-foot intervals around the rim. The object had approached the house with a roaring noise at high speed, then stopped abruptly at roughly 50 yards. The transition from high-speed approach to stationary hover was instantaneous — no visible deceleration curve, no braking behavior of any kind. Once stationary, the craft hung motionless and completely silent while the witnesses watched in disbelief.
While the object was still visible, a telephone call was placed to Mrs. Darwin Alexander, whose home was located less than half a mile from the Denver Alexander residence on the same road. Mrs. Darwin Alexander and her husband were able to observe the object through their patio window. She described a “swooshing noise” followed by silent hover and then instantaneous disappearance — no directional departure, no acceleration, no sound. The red lights were visible from both locations.
Independent confirmation came from neighbors across a field who reported seeing the same object, dispelling any possibility that the Alexander and Cothern families had been subject to a shared misperception. Additional community members reported similar experiences in conversation the following day.
A pilot at Brookhaven Municipal Airport, located approximately 25 miles from Jayess, provided further context. He confirmed that the airport had received multiple calls from residents in the Ruth-Jayess area reporting unidentified flying objects. More significantly, the pilot himself had personally witnessed an object of vague shape with lights around a rim hover in the sky in the presence of 12 to 15 other witnesses at Lakewood Village. During the observation, the object visibly dodged two passing jets. One of the jet pilots was overheard on radio contact with the McComb FAA Flight Service Station and answered negatively when asked if he had observed the object — a response that may reflect either genuine non-observation from the cockpit perspective or institutional reluctance to confirm an anomalous contact.
The Madison County sighting of February 3, 1977 — just two days before the Jayess event — involved Deputy Sheriff Ken Creel observing a round craft with portholes hovering 20 feet above his patrol car. That incident, reported by the Associated Press and on Jackson television news, established the Mississippi wave as a documented regional phenomenon before the Jayess event occurred.
Researcher’s Notes
The Alexander Family Encounter — Jayess 1977 and the Mississippi Wave
- Classification — CE-I Confirmed: At 50 yards (150 feet), this sighting is well within the 500-foot Close Encounter threshold. No physical effects on the witnesses, the vehicle, or the environment were reported, maintaining the CE-I classification. The “roaring” sound during approach might be considered an environmental effect, but as it ceased during the stationary phase and is consistent with aerodynamic noise rather than electromagnetic interaction, it does not warrant a CE-II upgrade.
- Source Chain Assessment — Local Press Documentation: The primary source is the Tylertown Times of February 17, 1977, with corroboration from the Brookhaven Leader-Times. The editor of the Tylertown Times conducted a telephone interview with Mrs. Darwin Alexander on Sunday, confirming the details reported in the Brookhaven paper. This dual-newspaper corroboration, combined with named witnesses (both Alexander families and the Cotherns), provides a strong local documentary foundation. The witness pool is notable for its composition — six adults from two separate family groups, observing from two different locations, with independent confirmation from a third position (the neighbors across the field). This is a structurally robust multi-witness case.
- Behavioral Analysis — Instantaneous State Transitions: The most technically significant feature of the Jayess object is its ability to execute what witnesses describe as instantaneous state transitions: from high-speed roaring approach to motionless silent hover, and from hover to complete disappearance. These transitions occurred without any observable intermediate state — no deceleration, no acceleration, no directional departure. In conventional aerodynamics, such transitions would require either infinite deceleration force or a fundamental departure from Newtonian mechanics. The witnesses’ description is consistent with a propulsion system that operates on principles unrelated to atmospheric thrust, potentially including inertial manipulation or field-effect drive systems that fall outside current aerospace engineering models.
- Wave Context — February 1977 Mississippi-Louisiana Corridor: The Jayess sighting sits precisely at the center of a documented wave that produced multiple high-credibility events across Mississippi and Louisiana within a two-week window: the Madison County patrol car encounter (February 3–10), the Jayess Alexander family sighting (February 5), the Flora deputy encounter (February 10), and the Louisiana Yscloskey suspended-animation case (January–February). This geographic and temporal clustering is analytically significant because the events involve different witness populations, different object descriptions, and different investigative documentation chains — making coordinated hoax or mass hysteria explanations logistically implausible. The wave pattern suggests genuine anomalous activity concentrated in the Mississippi-Louisiana corridor during early 1977.
The Jayess sighting of February 5, 1977, is a clean multi-witness close encounter with all the characteristics that make a case useful to the analytical record: named witnesses, multiple observation points, independent confirmation from uninvolved neighbors, local newspaper documentation, and a craft displaying performance characteristics that no known technology of the era could replicate. Six adults watched a dish-shaped object approach at speed, stop dead, hover in silence, and then cease to exist in their visual field without any departure trajectory. They told the newspaper. The neighbors confirmed it. The airport confirmed the calls. The record stands.
