Project 10073 Record — UFO Observation, 13 October 1967

This document contains a collection of reports and correspondence regarding a UFO sighting that occurred on the night of October 13, 1967, near Lake Charles, Louisiana. Witnesses, including a group that had been at a local Pentecostal church, observed a fiery object while at a truck stop on Interstate 10. The object was described as being approximately 30 to 40 feet long, traveling from south to north at an altitude of about one-quarter mile. Witnesses reported that the object moved in a north to northwest direction before exploding in the air and vanishing. Some witnesses noted that the object appeared to have wing-like structures at the moment of the explosion, and the sound of the event was described as muffled rather than loud. The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Department, specifically Sheriff H. A. Reid, Jr. and Deputy Sheriff Albert Manuel, forwarded reports of this incident and others to the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon. The Air Force's Foreign Technology Division, which managed Project Blue Book, subsequently contacted witnesses to request formal statements using FTD Form 164. The official analysis provided by the Air Force suggested that the object was likely a hot air balloon with a firecracker attached, designed to explode once the candles burned down to the fuse. This conclusion was supported by observations of similar hot air balloon sightings in the southern United States during the late summer and autumn months of 1967. The file also includes meteorological data regarding surface wind velocity and direction for the area, as well as a separate report from October 21, 1967, describing two fiery, tadpole-shaped objects traveling in a northerly direction, which the witness compared to meteors.