Lives are turned upside-down after UFO Sightings in Texas

Constable Lee Roy Gaitan saw the brilliant red orbs hovering in the sky and hollered for his family to come out. It's probably an airplane, said his wife, Wendy, who didn't budge from the couch. Only 8-year-old Ryan went to the front yard. That's a UFO, the boy said. Gaitan, a 44-year-old lawman who has spent 16 years patrolling the Texas scrubland, faced a dilemma. With an election coming up, he could tell the world of this incredible sight — and look like an idiot — or keep his mouth shut. "People would say, 'Hey, this guy is nuts. He's crazy,' " said Gaitan of his sighting on Jan. 8. In the morning, there were no unusual police reports, leaving him to wonder whether anyone else had seen the lights. But the next day, the Stephenville Empire-Tribune came out with a front-page story: "Possible UFO Sighting Four area residents witness mysterious objects." Soon, scores more said they had seen the same thing. Stephenville, a ranch town 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, became home to the biggest mass UFO sighting since the 1997 Lights Over Phoenix, in which thousands of people, including then Gov. Fife Symington, reported seeing a boomerang-shaped object in the sky.

With so many reports, there was no easy way to dismiss it all as a hoax. A town that had called itself "The Cowboy Capital of the World" found itself riding an emotional bronco. Stephenville, the largest town in Erath County, is in the heart of dairy country. Cows outnumber the 34,000 humans in the county. It was a cool, clear January night when Steve Allen, 50, and a group of friends were warming themselves around a fire of brush and debris in nearby Selden, just south of Stephenville. They first saw a set of brilliant white lights heading from the east that looked like they were at the corners of something a mile long and a half-mile wide. The lights were quicker and quieter than anything Allen had ever seen. "They came within a mile of us," said Allen, the owner of L&S Enterprises and Texas Freight, a local trucking company. "It flipped us all out." The lights headed toward Stephenville, where they came to a stop. They reconfigured to form an arch "shaped like the top of a football," Allen said, and realigned themselves into two vertical lines of randomly flashing lights. Then the object burst into a white flame.

"It looked like something firing up, like a blow torch," Allen said. "It simply vanished." Ten minutes later, the group saw the lights coming from the other direction. Trailing them closely, Allen was certain, were two military jets followed by two massive red orbs. Allen, who as a licensed pilot was comfortable judging distance, said the lights were 3,000 feet above the ground. He went home and told his wife, who urged him to keep the encounter to himself. Allen spent a sleepless night, enthralled by what he had seen. In the morning, he contacted the Empire-Tribune. His call went to education reporter Angelia Joiner. She knew nothing about UFOs, but Allen sounded like a sensible man. "He was a pilot and seemed very intelligent," said Joiner, a 47-year-old former schoolteacher who had been a reporter for 18 months. Allen's friends confirmed the account.

Some believed the lights could be a sign from God. A Bible study group at the Bread of Life Ministries discussed the events at one meeting, and Sandra Evans, 59, said she thought maybe they were guardian angels sent to Earth. Her husband, Keith, 60, pastor of the church, wasn't sure. "Could be the military," he said. "Could be the end of times."