1973 UFO sighting was perhaps Monroe County's most famous

The recent Congressional UFO hearings in Washington, D.C. were very interesting and left me thinking about what was perhaps Monroe County’s most famous UFO sighting.

Some in the reading audience may remember that on Oct. 15, 1973 a housewife in Mexia reported to Monroeville police that she saw a UFO soaring through the sky near her home. The woman, who lived inside Monroeville’s police jurisdiction on State Highway 47, told officers that she saw a “metallic saucer-shaped object in the southern sky” around 8 p.m. The woman refused to let her name be published because she feared that she would be ridiculed.

“It was a saucer, or in general a round shape,” the witness told Monroeville Police Chief James Maples the following day. “It was horizontal to the ground, and it looked like it had just a slight dome that was shining.”

The silver-colored craft rotated counterclockwise as it traveled south-southwest. It also emitted alternating, blending lights of reddish, orange and blue-white that appeared to shine from inside the craft through windows. The woman said she watched the UFO for 30 to 45 seconds with the naked eye and for about 10 more seconds through high-powered binoculars.

Though the woman couldn’t judge the craft’s size or its distance away, she said it appeared to be traveling along U.S. Highway 84, which was about a mile from her house. She also noted some interference with her TV reception just before she saw the object and said that reception returned to normal shortly afterward.

News of the woman’s experience made the front page of The Journal that week, and the paper also published a sketch of the “flying saucer” drawn by Maples.

“You don’t want to think that you can see things like that, but I saw it and nobody will ever convince me that I didn’t,” the woman told the newspaper. “I’ll always believe that I saw an unidentified object, and nobody knows what it is.”

The Journal also reported that there were “several unconfirmed reports” of UFO sightings in the county that week, and that two other citizens told The Journal that they’d seen strange lights in the sky. Another Mexia resident said he and three other people watched “a big glowing light” hover west of Mexia then move toward and past them in a northeasterly direction. That sighting was said to have happened on Oct. 15 shortly before the Mexia housewife called police about the UFO she saw.

Also that week, Mrs. W.T. Scruggs said she saw a “big ball of fire” moving through the sky near her home about 7:30 p.m. on the night of Oct. 14, the night before the other sightings. Scruggs lived west of State Highway 21, between Monroeville and Frisco City. The Journal noted that all three witnesses ruled out the possibility that the objects they saw were conventional aircraft.

In the end, if anyone in the reading audience remembers any additional details about the incidents described above, please let me know. It would be interesting to put together a more complete account of what happened in the Mexia area in October 1973.

(Got a comment or question? E-mail Lee Peacock at leepeacock2002@hotmail.com.)