Written by Jon Mercer in Paranormal
Viewed by 83 readers since 02-21-2009
What is it about the Deep South that seems to attract unidentified flying objects? Even the late comedian Bill Hicks once famously compared his comedy tours in the South to UFOs, noting that his act “only appeared in small Southern towns, witnessed by a handful of hillbillies.”
And when it comes to the plentiful UFO sightings of the South, Texas seems to be Alien Central Station. There were hundreds of claimed UFO sightings throughout the Lone Star State in 2008, and 2009 is shaping up to be another banner year for Texas UFO spotting.
Over the last weekend, a huge fireball slowly made its way across the Texas sky, alarming residents and prompting a flood of emergency calls to local police in Williamson County, Texas. In fact, the local sheriff’s office received so many distressed calls about the event, they sent deputies to investigate and even procured a police helicopter to search for the remains of a downed plane — what local authorities thought the fireball to be at first.
Others speculated that the fireball could have been wreckage from satellites which collided in orbit, though experts quickly dismissed this possibility as highly unlikely. A Russian and American satellite did actually collide over the past few days, as reported by nearly every news organization in the world, but experts say the trajectory of that collision would have taken it nowhere near rural Williamson County, Texas, where the fireball was first reported.
On Monday, Federal aviation administration spokespeople announced that they fire ball seen in the Texas sky over the weekend was “likely” a natural phenomenon, such as a meteor approximately the size of two midsize cars, and with a thick concrete-like consistency.
FAA spokespeople claim that falling satellite debris would have been too small to produce such a bright flare upon entering the atmosphere.
But some Texans don’t believe the flare was a meteor or satellite debris. Many local residents phoned police and news organizations reporting what they deemed to be some type of spacecraft entering the atmosphere, or an experimental military aircraft.
And truthfully, even the FAA is not saying definitively that they know what the object was; only that they suspect it was only a meteor. But whatever was streaking through the mid-Texas sky in broad daylight certainly got the attention of local residents and law enforcement. Meteor or not, witnessing a large hurling ball of fire arching its way across the sky can be an unsettling experience for anyone — even in the Deep South.
