◆ SpookStack

Statement taken from Leland Sammons : My name is Leland Sammons, and I live on a farm 14 miles west of Stockton and 1 mile north, off IS 2h. : eee On February 18 at about 5 P.M., I was standing near my hog=pen about 100' east of my house, when I heard the pheasants raising a disturbance and the chickens all rushed to the chicken-house. I looked around toward the house to see what was causing it and saw something hovering just above the house. I ran towardthe house, ami it then lowered over the north end of the house and settled toward the ground. Iwas then very near it, approximately 6' when it stopped about level with my face, and just wobbled around for an instant, fire belching out of it and sucking back in, The thing was about " long, shaped something like a funnel. There was a pipe sticking out the back of it, and once as it wobbled around, the pipe was sticking right at my belly. Suddenly there was a lot of sparks showered from it, and the fire increased as if a fuse might have lighted, and it took off in a north-westerly direction very fast, gaining altituie as it went. My wife heard it leave and ran out where I stood, and we watched it go, leaving a trail of smoke all the way. Suidenly there was a great cloud of smoke in the sky, not more than 40 seconds after it left my yard, and in a few seconds or more, we heard an explosion. I then stepped off from my house to where it had been, and it was five steps. ‘es, it was hot, I could feel the hear from it. Had I not been washing my car prior to the occurrence, wetting the ground, there would have been a bare spot in the yard where the thing started up because there was a great rush of fire from it when it left. It must have been quite high when Kenneth “ays, son of Floyd Hays, 1 miles east of Norton on US 36, atthe Jct, of K-60, south side of highway; At about 5 to 5:30 P.M., not sure of time, was riding his horse in a pasture, when he heard something queer in the sky. Looking up to the south-west, he saw what appeared to him to be a rocket just like he had seen during the war in Europe. It startled him, and he jumped off the horse. He then remounted, watched its course, almost on a level but losing altitude a little, and it then exploded with a big cloud of smoke, apparently over Norton, from where he was, south of Prairie View. He rode on toward home a ways, when suddenly the sound and jar of the explosion reached him. Mrs, Hays was home in the house, when she heard and felt something like a truck might have struck the house. She ran out of the house and then first saw the huge cloud of smoke. About 40 minutes later, a part of the smoke clowi dirfted directly over their house, and went on east over Phillipsburg. Ralph New, postmaster at Norcatur, stated that at about 4:50 P.M, he was standing just inside the front window of the postoffice in Norcatur, when he observed a blinding flash as if someone had taken a flashlight picture. He could locate no one with a camera, but noticed several men walking to the center of the street and looking up. He then walked out to where they were and looking up, saw a high cloud of smoke in the sky almost diredtly overhead