Stephenville Again

For the second week in a row, Larry King devoted the Friday edition of his CNN talk show to a discussion of UFOs. This week, the show focused almost completely on last winter's prolonged sightings seige in the skies around Stephenville, Texas. The show called Stephenville the most important mass sightings case since the Phoenix Lights incident in March, 1997.

A former newspaper reporter in Stephenville and two witnesses of the alleged UFO-- one of whom was a deputy sheriff-- were featured in the program, along with two UFO researchers. The skeptic role was filled by Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute.

Even though the two witnesses seemed to be solid, credible fellows, perhaps the most important evidence in this case is a large mass of raw radar data from airports in the area. When set against eyewitness reports that track the movement of the UFO over several minutes one night. the radar data seems to suggest something was in fact in the sky that night where witnesses put the UFO, and that something moved precisely as the witnesses described the flight of the UFO. If further analysis of the radar data supports the tentative judgments, Stephenville might be in the headlines a while longer.