Amarillo, Texas: Boy touches landed tire-sized disk, its gas reddens his arms

At 11:00 a.m. on April 8, 1950, David Lightfoot, 12, and Charles Lightfoot, 9, were fishing in a creek northeast of Amarillo, Texas, when they saw what looked like a balloon about 20° above the horizon, moving from the south. It passed only a few feet above them, circled slowly and disappeared over a small hill to the north. David ran after it and found it had landed: a blue-gray disk about as large as an automobile tire and about 1.5 feet tall, whose top spun quickly around a motionless central spindle. When he lunged at it and briefly touched its hot, slick surface, it took off straight up with a whistling noise, emitting a gas that turned his arms red and raised welts; Charles watched the takeoff from about 300 feet, and David's arms healed after salve was applied. Eberhart notes a possible hoax. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.