This happened in the early 1970s in the small town of Piedmont, Missouri.

There was extensive news coverage at the time.

It began when we all started seeing lights in the sky.

One was a huge ball, but it was too far away to gauge how big it was.

Each night, we could all go to the highest point in our town and see the events unfold.

We would watch as smaller balls of light drop from beneath a huge ball.

There would be 15 to 20 that would come

out and then zip around in all directions heading off to who knows where. Then sometime later, maybe

15 or 20 minutes, they'd all start coming back. First a couple and then a few more. We started calling the big ball the mother ship. If the smaller

balls sailed over our local radio station, it would go off the air. There was a lake about five

miles from town and they were seen coming out of that. These things were all over the place,

but we never understood their interest in our town.

One night, as we were coming back into town, we decided to drive through it and turn around

at the feed store a couple of miles on the other side. As I was pulling into the parking lot,

we suddenly saw a huge object floating up from the field behind it.

We all jumped out of the car to see what it was.

This thing was almost as big as the field that it was rising from.

It had a dim glow so we could see that it was round.

There were portholes all around with different colored lights. I tried my best to

see what was inside, but I couldn't see anything. It was completely silent. We watched as it

floated above the telephone poles. And then with lightning speed, it took off and was gone in three

seconds. Shortly after that, we

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