Mount Airy, North Carolina: Golden cigar after explosion, ring of depressed sod found
At 3:00 a.m. on August 19, 1965, Thelma B. Schumaker and her mother in Mount Airy, North Carolina, were awakened by an explosion and saw a bright golden cigar hovering in the north; the next morning they found a 12-foot circle of depressed sod.
Background
At 3:00 a.m. Thelma B. Schumaker and her mother, Mrs. W. H. Blackburn, were awakened by an explosion in their backyard in Mount Airy, North Carolina; the sound seemed to rise and travel west. They saw a bright golden cigar hovering in the north that moved right, left, up and down before disappearing behind high oak trees. The next morning they found a 6-inch-wide circle of depressed sod worn down to the soil, 12 feet in diameter. Eberhart cites Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings (CUFOS, 1975). 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.