The Lubbock Lights

One Strange Thing: True Paranormal Mysteries

Laurah Norton

Paranormalpodcast, History, True Crime, Paranormal, Mystery

4.6 • 763 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Strange lights captivated the people of Lubbock, Texas who happened to gaze skyward on a summer night in 1951. But what those lights actually were remains an object of contention… particularly because nobody involved, including the Air Force, seems interested in talking about it. One Strange Thing: True Paranormal Mysteries explores the archives of the unexplained, blending rigorous historical research with a wry, skeptical wit to investigate true supernatural stories and baffling mysteries that made headlines. Dive into our Episode Mystery Archive — a curated, topic-organized source for documented hauntings, UFO sightings, cryptids, folklore, and bizarre true mysteries. Check it out here! https://www.onestrangethingpodcast.com/episodes-by-topic-mystery-archive This is a presentation of Premium Episode 60 on the main feed. Hosted by Laurah Norton Research by Bryan Worters and Maura Currie Written, Engineered & Produced by Maura Currie Sources on our website: https://www.onestrangethingpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon for early release and ad-free episodes, exclusive stories, and bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/OneStrangeThing Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onestrangethingpod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/One-Strange-Thing-114307627035607 Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@onestrangething We have partnered with Libsyn to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They're great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email ad-sales@libsyn.com or click the link below to get started. https://advertising.libsyn.com/OneStrangeThing 2025 All Rights Reserved One Strange Thing Podcast & The Fall Line Podcast LLC Works Cited NA, "Flying 'strings of beads…'" The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1951. NA, "3 Texas Tech Profs…" The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1951. NA, "Flashes in sky filmed…" The Austin American, 1951. NA, "'String of beads' is…" The Odessa American, 1951. Kenneth May, "Scientist At Texas Tech…" The Lubbock Morning Avalanche, 1952. George Dolan, "This Is West…" The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1957. Dave Knapp, "Area writes own chapter…" The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 1969. History.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Laura Norton, and this is One Strange Thing, the show where we search the nation's
0:09.7	news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.
0:29.1	Today, strangers, we bring you to the Great Plains region of Texas, and more specifically to the city of Lubbock. There's a lot to say about the history of Lubbock, including a fun subplot
0:34.6	in which a municipal merger ended with a hotel being transported
0:38.4	across a canyon in the 1890s. We encourage you to look into that one on your own time.
0:44.0	But for the purposes today, you need to know that there has long been a healthy population
0:49.4	of academics in Lubbock. Texas Tech was founded there in 1923, and the beauty of having a lot of professors
0:56.7	crammed into one city is that, should something, well, strange happen. The odds are good that
1:02.8	someone with a PhD saw it and has something to say to the papers. Such was the case on August 25, 1951, a hot Saturday that gave way to a warm
1:16.4	Saturday night in Lubbock. It seems that a good chunk of the city's population was spending
1:21.8	that evening outside, including three professors who were relaxing in the backyard of one of their homes.
1:28.3	We can only assume that the conversation was riveting.
1:31.3	Per the Associated Press, Professor Ducker was a petroleum engineering expert,
1:36.3	Professor Oberg, an instructor in chemical engineering, and Professor Robinson, a geologist.
1:42.3	There's an all-walked-into a bar-bar joke here we know, but a better punchline for this situation is what actually happened.
1:51.0	All of these experts in how things work here on Earth, shooting the breeze in the backyard,
1:57.0	and then some unidentified objects decide to appear in the sky. Pretty classic.
2:05.3	According to the AP, quote, the first group of objects flying in a rough semicircular or crescent formation,
2:13.2	but with a bulge in the direction of flight was sighted at 9.10 p.m.
2:18.3	The objects moved from northeast to southwest.
2:22.3	So did a similar formation which appeared about three minutes after the first one.
2:27.3	The formation crossed the sky from arc to arc of the horizon in about three seconds.
	...

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