By Lee Freeman
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library,
Local History-Genealogy Department
“The Truth is Out There” was the tagline of hit TV show “The X-Files,” in which FBI agent Fox Mulder (David Ducovny) and his skeptical partner Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigated the alleged alien abduction of Mulder’s 8 year-old sister Samantha. The pair searched for answers to Samantha’s disappearance from the Mulder Martha’s Vineyard home in 1973 and the subsequent US government cover-up of a possibly pending alien invasion. However, “The X-Files” was based at least partly on fact.
Since 1947, thousands of Americans have reported sightings of UFOs (unidentified flying objects–a group of sightings is referred to as a “flap”) from New England to Texas and Alaska to Florida. The most recent sightings to garner widespread public attention were the so-called “Phoenix Lights,” a series of elliptical orange orbs flying in formation witnessed by hundreds of people from Phoenix, Arizona, to Sonora, Mexico, initially on March 13, 1997, then again in 2007 and 2008.
During WWII many Allied fighter pilots and bomber crews reported seeing fast-moving UFOs, which they termed “foo fighters.”
Civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported the first widely publicized UFO sighting in the US on June 24, 1947, as he was flying along the crest of the Cascade Mountain Range near Mt. Rainer, Washington. In this first of three eventual sightings, Arnold spotted nine unidentified objects which he described as flat like pie pans, half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear that moved as saucers skipping across the water.
However; the media misquoted Arnold as referring to the objects as “flying saucers” and the name stuck, although many subsequent sightings were of cylindrical or cigar-shaped objects or simply described as lights in the sky. Arnold’s report caused a sensation and triggered hundreds of similar accounts across the nation–the start of the UFO craze in America.
Probably the most famous instance of an alleged UFO occurred on June 14, 1947, when farmer William Ware “Mac” Brazel discovered some strange clusters of debris while working on the Foster ranch, where he was foreman, some 30 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. Brazel told the “Roswell Daily Record” that he and his son saw a large area of strange bright wreckage. The next day, Brazel heard reports of “flying discs” and wondered if what he’d found was the wreckage of a flying saucer.
In 1952 the US Air Force began Project Bluebook (replacing its earlier 1948-1952 projects Sign and Grudge) to investigate reports of UFOs. Project Bluebook closed in 1969, concluding that “(1) no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security; (2) there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge; and (3) there has been no evidence indicating the sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ are extraterrestrial vehicles.”
However many skeptics remain unconvinced and believe the Air Force and the US government are covering up the existence of UFOs. Many UFO investigators believe that Area 51, a part of Edwards Air Force Base in Nevada, is where the government stores the wreckage of the Roswell spacecraft store. Some even believe that the Air Force also has the bodies of the aliens recovered from the crash site.
The newspaper also reported several UFO sightings across the nation. On Monday, July 7, 1947, the paper reported that the previous day, “mysterious flying saucers” had appeared in the skies over Birmingham in a “spectacular display of whirling lights.” Eyewitnesses reported the objects as “disc-shaped, fiery” and moving “very fast.”
Interestingly, the Shoals wasn’t immune to the UFO phenomena. In its Friday, July 11, 1947, issue, the “Florence Times” carried a headline on page 1 that read “Have ‘Flying Saucers’ Come to the Shoals Area? Some Seem [to] Think So.” The paper reported that O. McConnell and J E Johnson had seen what they believed was a “flying disc” Wednesday morning about 4:30, five miles west of Florence, on Waterloo Road, while they were on a fishing trip. The two men reported that an object, which was “very bright,” passed in front of the windshield of their
car “at a terrific speed” and then went out “just like a light.” McConnell described the object as looking like a streetlight viewed from a block away. Though they couldn’t judge the distance the object was from their car, they were certain it was traveling due north.
Another report came from Mrs. James O. Hester, of Sheffield, who reported that on the morning of Friday, July 11, she and her son and daughter, along with several neighbors, had also seen a “flying disc,” which “came downward very fast and then swooped upward again.” In the article, the paper instructed anyone spotting a UFO to call the TVA Airport in Muscle Shoals.
The next day, Saturday, July 12, under the headline “More ‘Flying Saucers’ Reported Here,” the “Florence Times” reported that Mrs. H. L. Hill of Stewart Springs, just west of Florence, and F. L. Thompson, of Cloverdale, had reported seeing “flying saucers.” Friday afternoon, July 11, Mrs. Hill observed “about 30 discs coming over in two sections.” Several boys ran into her store to tell her about the UFOs and by the time she got outside the second group was already overhead. Hill reported that the objects were “as large [to the naked eye] as a small plate” and shiny. “They looked just like they were described in the papers,” Mrs. Hill said, adding that could tell they were flat by “the way the wind tossed them around.” Five other people at the Hills’ store also saw these mysterious objects.
Thompson told the paper that he never would have seen his “saucer” at 3:15 pm that Friday had he not stopped to look up at a plane passing overhead and spotted “the adventuresome little plate,” which he estimated was 12 or 14 inches in diameter, “and one side was shiny, probably aluminum.”
But there was more to come. In its Friday, July 25, 1947, issue, the “Florence Times” carried its most bizarre article on UFOs to date–one with the headline “Florence Police ‘Gain Custody’ of ‘Flying Saucer.”
The article reported that the Florence Police Department had “gained custody” of a flying saucer, which Chief Noah Danley was turning over to the FBI. The paper said that on Wednesday, July 23, “The ‘flying saucer’ shot to the ground at a terrific speed in the front yard of Mrs. W. T. Williams, Stevenson street, East Florence . . . and burned into the ground one-half of an inch deep, digging a circle of about six inches in diameter.” The paper added that the residue of the “saucer” was “odd burned stuff—some bits of electrical-like apparatus.” Mrs. Williams called Florence police immediately and reported that the object “headed straight down” out of the sky and made a noise like a hummingbird before it crashed. According to the newspaper story, Florence Police Officer J. W. Goforth photographed the object after he, Officer Ernest Romine and Mrs. Williams’ husband removed it from the ground.
Assuming this report wasn’t intended as a joke, what did the FBI do with this object? Do the photos still exist? And just what was this object which crashed in Mr. and Mrs. Williams’ yard? We may never know. I can’t locate any other reports of this incident. Apparently the other area papers didn’t cover the story and the Florence newspaper never followed it up. Yet since 1947, in fact as recently as 2015, Shoals residents have periodically reported seeing UFOs. But just what did all of these people actually see?
The Truth is Out There.
Florence native Lee Freeman has been the local historian-genealogist at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library since 1997. The author of one book & several articles, he serves on local historical & historical preservation boards.
