The Flora Incident

FLORA, Miss. (WLBT) – The story starts like this.

The year was 1977. The month, February. The setting, a cool Wednesday night on a country road near Flora, Mississippi, a small town 25 miles north of Jackson.

Deputy Kenneth Creel and Constable James Luke were in their patrol car when a star fell from the sky. On its descent, the star grew brighter and closer. As Creel would tell The Madison County Herald, the star acted “as if it were being piloted.”

Then it would soon take shape. It was not a star at all. It was a craft.

It would hurtle toward them, soon hovering mere feet above their vehicle. They did not get out. Instead, they hit reverse. And as they moved, the craft would do the same, finding a home above a nearby cotton field.

The object was round and large, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, and emitted a light humming noise. It had portholes with changing colors from within: blue, red and green. Creel and Luke radioed the Mississippi Highway Patrol. “There’s a UFO out here. Come over if you want to see it.”

Some 20 curious men – police officers, sheriff’s deputies and highway patrolmen – would show up to that field near Flora. Those 20 men would also lay eyes on the object, its glow radiating so brightly in the darkness that their shadows appeared on the ground.

After around 45 minutes, the star returned to its home in the sky, disappearing as mysteriously as it had appeared.

What had just occurred was the largest mass UFO sighting in Mississippi history.

The event, or at least the account of the supposed event, was irresistible to the national press. This was only three years after the famous “Pascagoula Alien Abduction,” in which Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed they were taken aboard a spacecraft and examined by alien lifeforms on the Mississippi coast.

Now two new stars had appeared to the media just as suddenly as the craft had appeared in the field: Kenneth Creel and James Luke.

There were phone calls, articles, and TV interviews, and Creel would soon grow tired of it all. As he told reporters, he would have never reported the thing had he known what was to come. And then he recanted. It was all made up. There was no UFO after all, you see. It was a joke. Ha-ha.

Neither Creel nor Luke would speak publicly of the encounter again.

So what really happened in that field all those years ago? And what are the chances that it was all some kind of elaborate hoax, as Creel eventually implied?

The first person I went to for answers was Pat Frascogna, a lawyer who has taken a special interest in UFOs and has co-authored a book on the subject, which was published in 2014.

And just for background, his wife is cousins with Kenneth Creel.

Several years before his first book was published, he tried writing something on the Flora incident. He would almost immediately hit a roadblock. No one wanted to talk to him about it.

This was before thousand-word profiles about alien-hunting Harvard professors were written about in The New York Times. Before there were televised Congressional hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena. Before the culture was oversaturated with the topic of extraterrestrials.

That’s why Frascogna believes what happened in that field “is 100% real.” The principal witnesses had no reason to make it up, he says. “That was not a good time, 1977, to be talking about [UFOs]. Much easier now, but certainly not then.”

Frascogna says he even ran a full-page ad in the local Flora newspaper asking for witnesses. Some came forward, but not first-hand witnesses. Instead, it was the daughters and cousins of first-hand witnesses. And when these daughters asked their fathers to speak on the record, the fathers politely declined.

The book was scrapped, the remnants living in a file somewhere on Frascogna’s computer.

“I would still like to revisit the Flora book,” Frascogna said, “but without anybody talking, it’s kinda— it’s just— it’s all second, third-hand kinda stuff.” He tossed up his hands.

And that would be the problem with writing about the Flora incident. Although the public is now more receptive to the UFO conversation, it has been nearly five decades since it took place. Most who witnessed it are either no longer living, do not wish to discuss it, or honestly can’t remember what happened on that night in 1977.

But there are a few who do remember what happened. And they are willing to talk about it.

He told me to identify him only as “Joe.” That was his only request. Other than that, he was ready to talk.

Although it’s been 46 years, Joe, now 85 years old, can recall every minute detail of that February night.

Joe is sharp, and, full disclosure, is also a UFO guy. He is fascinated by the topic and can wax poetic about the lore of space – and those who may or may not inhabit it – at length.

We were sitting inside the Flora Public Library when I asked him to tell me about February 9, 1977. He told me the story really started in 1956. That’s when he first started seeing them. And that’s why he went out and bought himself a camera, a Canon AE-1. He was gonna capture the UFOs on film.

And then came his chance. It was 9:30 p.m. that fateful night when he heard a knock on his door. When he opened it, he was met by a fellow deputy. Get your camera and come on! That thing’s out here!

Joe did as he was told, his Canon in tow.

He arrived at the scene, and there it was. It shone a pale blue in the moonlight, he says, swaying pendulum-style back and forth. It was around four football fields away. Too far for a picture, especially at night.

But he could draw it.

Joe asked for a pen and a piece of paper. “I’m no artist,” he said as he got to work. The object he drew was oval in shape and was dotted with circular portholes along the middle.

He said that he and the men stared at the craft for a while before it started heading north. Some of the men, including Joe, followed it. It would again stop in the sky for a time before it moved. Then it was gone for good.

I asked Joe if he believed that what he saw that night was the work of aliens.

“Yeah, they were aliens,” he said, his delivery deadpan. For Joe, the answer was obvious.

And for the most part, Joe’s story matched the original version beat for beat, sans aliens. Same names, same place, same mysterious object.

When I asked Joe if he knew of anyone else who would talk on the record, he crossed his arms and began to think. He then shook his head.

“They won’t tell you.”

And so began the journey of finding other witnesses.

Many Google searches of those who had seen the object in Flora would only lead to their obituaries. And as Pat Frascogna had warned, those who were still alive didn’t wish to speak of that night. When I asked one witness if he would like to tell his story, his response was an immediate no. When I asked if he could just verify some facts, he said okay.

Over the phone, I began going over the main points: Officers, cotton field, UFO.

Yes, yes, yes. The witness said that all sounded about right. He then suggested I speak to a man named Lewis Younger. He was with the Mississippi Highway Patrol at the time and he had gotten the best view of the object.

Younger had been mentioned by name in one of the original articles written about the event. In that article, he had gone on record as saying he had also seen it, whatever it was.

But time is a funny thing.

While “Joe’s” memory of that night was crystal clear, completely cemented in his brain, down to the time and the type of camera he was carrying, Younger’s was less so.

When speaking to him over the phone, he only vaguely remembered what had taken place all those years ago. His recollection was that the object was up with the stars and that it moved at an amazing rate of speed. He said he assumed that it had something to do with the military. Maybe a stealth bomber.

That’s all he could recall. Bummer.

But then, a breakthrough. It just so happened that inside the Mississippi Department of Archives and History sat a roll of film. On that roll of film, labelled “UFO,” was an interview WLBT News had conducted with Lewis Younger marked February 10, 1977; one day after the Flora incident.

Dressed in his highway patrol uniform, Lewis spoke of his experience the night before. His voice is low and steady as he describes the object in the field as “a ball of light” that radiated “a reddish glare.”

“It floated there for a while and then it just disappeared,” he says in the grainy footage.

“Do you believe in UFOs?” Younger is asked by a reporter.

He grins. “It’s hard to say. I would really rather not comment on that right now.”

If all these men are to be believed, an unidentified flying object was seen in the skies over Flora, Mississippi in 1977.

Aside from the knee-jerk thought of aliens!, as many like “Joe” may believe, might there be other possibilities; perhaps something more… of this earth?

I posed this question to Greg Eghigian, a professor of history and bioethics at Pennsylvania State University whose upcoming book, After the Flying Saucers Came, focuses on the history of UFO phenomena.

Eghigian told me that nearly all UFO sightings “have pretty mundane explanations,” adding that most UFOlogists (which, yes, are a real thing) would also agree with that assessment.

“Probably the most common [explanations] are odd or unfamiliar kinds of meteorological phenomenon,” Eghigian said. He would use sundogs as an example, which are balls of refracted light that can cause one or more “false suns” in the sky.

Since the Flora incident occurred at night, it would be safe to cross out this possibility.

Another explanation, though, especially in the 50s and 60s, were spy planes, which were often mistaken as UFOs; the government doing little to nothing at all to dispel these rumors.

Eghigian would then point out something interesting.

Just recently, the RAND Corporation conducted a study in which they analyzed 101,151 public reports of UFO sightings in the United States from 1998 to 2022.

The “most consistent and statistically significant finding” in this study was that UFO sightings were more likely to occur within 30 kilometers of military operations.

Could it be that Mr. Younger is right, that what they witnessed in that field was some sort of classified military craft? After all, Mississippi is home to several military bases.

A strong possibility.

The story ends like this.

Just two days after a craft was spotted near Flora, a similar object was seen in Jayess, Mississippi, an unincorporated community nearly 100 miles south of Flora.

Eddie Alexander was only a teenager when the object floated over his home.

From a distance, the object sounded like an 18-wheeler, Alexander said. But as it got closer, the sound faded. He and a neighbor then saw lights above a pasture, “right over the tree tops. It wasn’t real high or anything.”

Eddie never saw what he described as the “body” of the object, but did notice the multiple lights on it as it slowly drifted away.

The sighting was seen by enough people to make the Tylertown Times. The paper proclaimed the event, “The most dramatic sighting of an unidentified flying object to be reported in this part of Mississippi.”

Below is an excerpt from that report.

And then— nothing.

No more reports of any UFOs for days and then months. Most would all but forget about the strange UFO stories they had read about in the paper. But the memories of what some had seen lingered on.

Two years after the Flora incident, one man headed to the Mississippi state capitol with a story to tell. That man was Herbert Roberts. He was one of the witnesses of the incident, and had since become Flora’s police chief. And before a group of congressmen, he told his story.

“I don’t think I saw it,” he told the stunned politicians. “I know I did.”

The Clarion-Ledger would chronicle that subcommittee meeting, writing that those in attendance sat in “rapt attention.”

So eerie was Roberts’ tale that one representative in the room immediately drew up a proposal that the state of Mississippi ask the United States Senate to launch a formal investigation into UFOs. The state did no such thing.

And that would be that. Everyone would return home, left to ponder what they had heard.

The years would pass and time would do what it always does. The Flora incident would again fade from many minds. Through the years, it would become a sort of tall tale, an individualized Mississippi legend. It would be chalked up to any number of things: the military, a type of natural phenomena, or, yes, even aliens.

Forty-six years later, the incident remains as mysterious as it was in 1977, no one yet coming to any decisive conclusions.

And perhaps they never will.

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