SIGHTING: LADONIA, MISSOURI (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"Traveling north on highway 54 east of Mexico, Missouri a well known road. Just past a dog leg in the road perhaps 5 miles south of Ladonia I noticed a blinking light above the horizon pulsing orange. I was a model control line flyer and well versed in aircraft and flight. I was puzzled that a radio tower had been placed in that position in just a week since I had traveled home the privious Saturday as well. I was accompanied by my then fiance Linda Pflum. We were about 19 at the time. She was asleep on my lap and no we had not been drinking. I watched this bliking light as I drove north toward it and then it began to move. It would drop dramatically and speed up and as it did so the pulsation would increase and then slow as it slowed. I was very attentive and slowed down trying at this point to figure out what a helicopter was doing there this time of night but was more puzzled by the single orange light since the red/green nav lights were not present. There were open fields on both sides of me, farm land. To the left was a tree line perhaps a half mile or less away. The craft smoothed out its trajectory still moving slowly. There was no rural traffic at all that night. As the craft slowed to a hover over the tree line I woke Linda. She was pretty fuzzy for a minute and asked what is that?By this time I was stopped and she was becoming restless. At that moment two other rounded discs came up from behind the trees and hovered staggered just to the left and below it. First one and then the other started off in a path I judges would take them very close to Mexico Missouri to the southeast. Linda told me she was afraid and we should go. I believe she started crying. The original object traveled across the field moving from my left in a eastern direction at maybe 10-15 mph. I backed my car a little down the culvert to try and get my headlights up but the object crossed in front of me one telephone pole length in front of me just over the telephone pole. I could have hit it with a rock. It gave me the impression that it looked like spun aluminum softly burnished and it seemed to glow orange from within.It continued to travel across the field and started to move NE then accelerated rapidly and moved away. I could still make out the light so I took off as fast as the car would run. It was a 66 Lemans with the high performance six and four barrel so I was running maybe 110-120. I cleared the town of Vidalia at 110 and continued on. I slowed down as the road met highway 61 north and drove maybe 80 up past New London, Missouri. There is a small river valley just outside of New London to the North, Salt River I think. At the far eastern edge of the valley toward the Missippi River there was an installation of three radio towers visable at that distance and there I saw the same craft or one like it doing circles around the top of the towers until the tree line obscurred my line of sight.I observed that this was niether a helicopter,or fixed wing craft. It made absolutely no sound. It was not a balloon as it accelerated and changed altitude as smooth as molasses. Balloons don't outrun cars at that altitude with no wind. This was not something that we possesed the ability to make in 1966 if even now. It was perhaps fifty feet across.I got two friends and we went back out to the towers after I dropped Linda off. She was so frightened that she hid her eyes and refused to talk about it. I called the tower at Quincy Illinois the next day and asked if there had been anything on the screen other then routine traffic at around 3 am the night before. There was silence opon the line and the tower asked,"Why, did you see something strange?" I told them that if I had I wasn't about to make a formal report and thanked him and hung up.At the moment this happened I realized this was not something from here. I was overcome by a great since of awe and peace and excitement. I was energized after that and did not go to sleep till maybe 7 am.I submit this now if for no other reason then to ad my observations to others and perhaps add a piece to the puzzle. I know what I saw and was very close to it and with my knowlege even then of aviation I understood this was something beyond our capability.Thanks for your work. Thomas Smith"