December 30, 1966 — Haynesville, LA
8:15 p.m. Physics professor Louie A. Galloway III is driving with his family through a wooded area on US Highway 79 in southern Columbia County, Arkansas, 3.6 miles north of Haynesville, Louisiana, when they see a bright, pulsating orange glow in the woods. At one point it suddenly brightens to a blinding white light, forcing Galloway to shield his eyes and waking up his children who are sleeping in the back seat. After 4 seconds it returns to its red-orange appearance. Galloway sends a report to USAF’s Project Blue Book, which forwards it on to the University of Colorado UFO project. Galloway returns to the location in January 1967 and computes the distance of the light from the road at about 0.7 to 1.2 miles.
The Colorado project estimates the light source’s burst of power in the range of 500–1400 MW. Later, Galloway locates the actual landing area, a 30-foot in diameter clearing on the ground and finds that all the trees on the periphery of the clearing have blackened, burned bark facing the center of the clearing.
The bark fragments are submitted to a large US atomic facility for analysis in 1978, but are “returned without any disclosure of findings.” In 2024, Jacques Vallée submits the bark samples to gamma-ray spectroscopy, which reveals cesium-137 as one of the elements; he also estimates the light source’s power intensity to be comparable to a small nuclear power plant at 500–900 MW, although there are multiple unknown variables that could affect the analysis. [Eberhart]
Sources:
Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: A Century of Landings, pp. 45, 338; [Case 808]
Edward Condon, Final report of the scientific study of unidentified flying objects conducted by the University of Colorado, pp. 61, 277-280;
Condon File Card, #122;
Brad Sparks, Blue Books Unknowns Catalogue, Case 1709, p. 320;
Jacques Vallée, “Estimates of Power Optical Output in Six Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Defined Luminosity Characteristics,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 3 (1998): 350–352;
https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/12/jse_12_3_Vallée_1.pdf
Jacques Vallée, Luc Dini, and Geoffrey Mestchersky, “Estimates of Radiative Energy Values in Ground-Level Observations of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon: New Physical Data,” Progress in Aerospace Sciences preprint, April 25, 2025;
“For the First Time in History, a Peer-Reviewed Scientific Article on a UFO Case Is Accepted in ‘Progress in Aerospace Sciences,’” Ovnilogia, August 24, 2025;