Mystery of "UFO" seen last week near Millington is solved

A mysterious picture, taken at a home near Millington, kept people perplexed for nearly a week.

The image, of a mysterious object hovering over the ground, spurred dozens of emails from WMCTV.com readers.

Suggestions on what the object might be were varied, from water on a lense, to a spaceship with a cloaking device, to a stealth aircraft.

One email even called us "stupid."

Our search for the real answer took us far and wide, eventually ending in Eads, where itwas found alongside another big, open pasture.

Amid rows of pipe, and lines of charge, the answer lurked...with Randy Bast.

Bast is the operator of High Tech Special Effects. A crew headed by Bast spent last Wednesday near Lucy Road at Memphis Motorsports Park, shooting pyrotechnics for an upcoming television special.

At 7:30 that night, they set off a gas bomb. A carbon smoke ring, a byproduct of the bomb that usually lasts no more than five minutes, stuck around for over 40 minutes.

"There was no wind that day, so it hung there remarkably long, compared to the normal ones that we do," Bast said.

The answer: A smoke ring, something perhaps un-natural, but definitely not supernatural.