Classic Mysteries—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, August 2018
From the files of Brent Raynes
A Very Close Encounter in Missouri
by: Brent Raynes
Macon, MO (AP) Northeast Missouri has had a flurry of unidentified flying object reports on three nights this week; and William Overstreet of Elmer, Mo., says after his experience he is not the skeptic he once was.
Overstreet tells of driving directly under a mysterious, hovering object on his way to work early Tuesday morning.
“I just don't know – I never saw anything like it,” Overstreet said.
The UFO activity started Sunday night at Kirksville. Kirksville police responded to one alarm, after a father and son reported a strange airborne glow. When officers arrived, the object had disappeared.
More sightings were reported at Kirksville Sunday night, and at Lancaster – north of Kirksville – and at Novelty, to the southeast.
The Federal Aviation Administration station at the Kirksville airport got two reports Tuesday night, Art Buchanan, who lives at Greentop, Mo., and is a pilot, reported he followed an unusually strong white light as it flew west from Greentop. Harold Forman of Novelty spotted another high over Novelty.
Overstreet is a 50-year-old contract mail carrier who formerly was night marshall at Elmer. He tells a graphic story of his encounter Tuesday morning.
He was on his way to work about 6:40 just after sunrise, and was on Macon County Route J about four miles west of its intersection with U.S. 63 near Atlanta, Mo., when he saw an unusually bright light to the south.
Overstreet described it as a reddish ball – about 100 feet in diameter – so bright that he pulled down the visor in his truck and shielded his eyes over his head. He said there seemed to be a yellow border around the outside that moved clockwise. There was no noise, and it cruised about 30 feet above the road ahead of him at 40 miles an hour.
Overstreet said as he got beneath the object there was a beam of white light that focused into a spot about eight feet in diameter on the road and everything seen through it was magnified.
Overstreet said the object finally veered to the north and circled to the southeast, still going slowly and close to the ground.
Overstreet later retraced his route, stopping at farm houses to ask the occupants if they had seen anything. He could find no one who had.
Source: The Courier-Post, Hannibal, Missouri. Thursday, March 6, 1969 Title: UFO Sightings Excite Citizens Around Macon