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Pilots flying near Dallas Fort Worth International Airport recently reported some suspicious lights floating around that air traffic controllers couldn’t spot with their technology. It provoked quite the conversation.
Seems UFO sightings is a topic that may never go out of style, especially in North Texas. In fact, a recent study names Texas as one of the top hotspots for UFO sightings in the U.S. Some of the more talked-about UFO sightings in the nation’s history have occurred in other parts of Texas like Levelland, Lubbock and Dayton, for example.
It got us to thinking about North Texas’ history with UFO sightings. In case you aren’t aware, it’s neither a rare nor recent phenomenon. This is by no means a comprehensive compendium of North Texas UFO sightings, but here are some of the accounts that stuck out the most to us.
Dallas County, April 1897
UFO sightings in North Texas were all the rage back when ol’ Charles Culberson served as the state’s 21st governor, just 30-plus years removed from the Civil War. According to the Texas Almanac, “between April 13 and 17, 1897, there were 38 reported sightings of ‘airships’ in 23 counties in Texas, including in Denton and Dallas Counties.”
Newspapers of the day reported the sightings straight-faced, although one can read more than a little tongue-in-cheek writing into some of the dispatches from community correspondents.
Descriptions of the airships varied somewhat, but there was a general consensus that they had cigar-shaped bodies or cabins 50 to 60 feet long with propellers at each end, large bat-like wings, and huge floodlights fore and aft. Most witnesses saw neither pilot nor crew, but in some cases, not only did observers see people manning the ships, but talked to them. The Dallas Morning News’ correspondent at Waxahachie reported a long conversation between Judge Love of the community and an airship crew, which claimed to be from the North Pole.
Love Field, 1952
In 2015, the Observer published an article looking at the Dallas UFO sightings mentioned in Project Blue Book, a federal program that subjected reports of UFO sightings to certain scientific analysis. This sighting noted in Project Blue Book caught our eye.
There was considerable air traffic in the vicinity (normal Love Field activity) and there was enough light that aircraft were identifiable as the general type when viewed in the southwest, the sun to the rear. I first noticed an orange colored light which appeared to be nothing more than the exhaust or running light of an aircraft. Then, I noticed the light gave off an exhaust trail similar to that of an afterburner. I watched the light in its descending path for about four seconds when it seemed to fire a number of “rockets” and vanished.
University Park, 1961
Another local example logged in Project Blue Book was intriguing to us. One man who reported a UFO sighting was indeed looking to the sky for something unique, but not for what he says he found.
At exactly 4:07 AM CST early Thursday morning, March 9th, I was out in my back yard doing a bit of amateur satelloon watching [a balloon satellite] ….hoping to see the polka-dot 12 footer, and I SAW A BIG, extremely fast, unidentified object streaking from about ENE to SW across the sky. It moved so fast was hard to focus on it, but I DO remember quite a bit of the impression it left on me. This object, seemingly, moved so darn fast that I would never have given it much later thought, except that the 7:00 AM news that morning carried big story that the Russians had orbited a dog, etc. in a 5-ton rocket.
Denton, 2007
Did you know there’s a National UFO Reporting Center? The center has a website where folks can log their sightings. This account from Denton, reprinted as it appeared, caught our attention, as we could relate to feeling more than a little perplexed at what we think we may have just seen.
I think I saw a UFO. I am not really sure. I feel like I am kind of crazy for thinking this. I was driving on 35W in Denton, TX around 10:15 a.m. 11/21/07 this morning and when I came over a hill I saw three white things in the sky. It was like 1 mile in front of me, slightly to the right. I wasn’t sure if it was the balls that are on powerline to warn airplanes and then I thought it was a reflection the stadium. the balls were white with some silver tint. They were almost a perfect circle, but a little oblong.
They were perfectly aligned in a row a little to the left of me looking straight ahead. I was thinking I should take a picture because I thought oh it might be a UFO. I was trying to figure out what it was and the one on the right disapeared and one second later the middle one dissapeared and a little less then one second later the left one dissapeared. It didn’t fade out or dart away. It just dissapeared in a split second.
I am super freaked out right now and I don’t know if It was something from Carswell air base or Lockead Martin, but I have NEVER seen anything like this before. It was soooo clear too. Not fuzy at all! PLease let me know if anyone else has seen this one in Denton! I have been very skeptical of UFO sightings, but I am so freaked out and paranoid now!
Irving, 2021
Look, not all UFO sightings are created equal. Not all accounts are going to get the public all riled up. But here’s one from Irving from only three years ago, and it includes the term “armillary sphere,” for which we give props. It’s a wonderfully on-point description of what we think an alien spacecraft may look like. Plus, there’s a video of it, posted to a website called Newsflare.
The shiny spinning disc was seen hovering over a golf course before it appeared to have landed on the ground in Irving on April 25.
Footage was recorded by a man who was visiting the area with his friends. They then saw the strange object reflecting the sunlight from a distance.
A man was heard saying in the background: ‘You see that? That’s not a weather balloon, dude, it’s flat.
‘It’s moving really weird, it’s like spinning and it’s got another disc inside of it that’s spinning.’
He described the object as a ‘large metallic ring that floated around a separate metallic sphere within the ring, like a flying armillary sphere.’
