UFO seekers flock to mystery lights in Texas

By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 6:35pm GMT 15/01/2008

Amateur UFO investigators are to descend on a farming community in Texas where dozens of people reported seeing mysterious lights in the sky.

A pilot, policeman and local business owners are among those who insist they have seen a large, silent object with bright lights flying low and fast over the town of Stephenville, 60 miles south west of Fort Worth.

Some said they saw fighter jets chasing the craft, which was mostly spotted on one evening - January 8.

The local airforce base said none of its planes were in the area last week.

A spokesman has suggested that the UFO might have been an illusion created by sunset falling on commercial airliners.

Unconvinced, local people insist the object was larger, quieter, faster and closer to the ground than an airplane.

Steve Allen, a pilot and freight company owner, said: "People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times."

Mr Allen, a freight company owner and pilot, described the object he saw as a mile long and half a mile wide.

"It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts," he said.

Looking through the telescopic sights of his rifle, Ricky Sorrells, a machinist, said he saw a flat and seamless metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a field.

Lee Roy Gaitan, an Erath County constable, said: "I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it."

He added: "I think it must be some kind of military craft - at least I hope it was."

The US airforce no longer investigates UFOs. Around 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to visit Stephenville next weekend.

Fourteen per cent of Americans polled last year said they have seen a UFO.