Reported Crop Circles for the State of Missouri -

Jenkins, Barry County (October 8, 1978)

Jenkins MO Formation

On a Thursday morning between 6:30-7:30 A.M., Mrs. Dora Sturgell and her grandson were looking out a window of their house at a coyote crouched low in the field behind their house near one of their calves.  They also noticed a glinting object in the early morning light between the two animals. The coyote was the first animal to run, then the calf.  The object remained stationary and “glistening” until 9:00 A.M. when Dora’s daughter, Francis, watched the object lift off the ground – the first five feet very fast.  The object was reported to have changed from a white color while remaining on the ground, to a bright, reflective metallic.  The object rose to about 50 feet, where the witnesses reported seeing a much larger second oval-shaped object.  The two rose up into the “vivid blue sky” and disappeared.  A single 4.5' diameter “crisp” circle was found flattened and scorched where the first object had been on the ground.

Jenkins MO Formation

Barry County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Breeden investigated the site and found three smaller circles “at regular points near the circumference of the circle” with the smaller circles measuring about 8 inches in diameter.  The grass in the smaller circles were also flattened and “scorched”.  The deputy contacted the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago who suggested the Deputy cover the area with a tarp until they could get an investigator out to the site.

Jenkins MO Formation

Ted Phillips arrived on Saturday to collect the soil and plant samples taken by Deputy Breeden, as well as to take control samples.  Phillips tested for soil moisture content for radioactivity, and used a ‘pentrometer’ to measure if any force was applied to the ground.  When the tarp was removed from the circle, the “crispness” was gone, and the circle was more “crumpled”.

Jenkins MO Formation

It was suggested by some at the time, that a National Weather Service weather balloon might have been the object spotted that morning, but subsequent investigation showed that the balloon launched by the NWS that morning from 14 miles away from the Sturgell farm traveled in the opposite direction away from the farm due to the prevailing winds.

Crop type: grass

Source: "The Missouri Trace Case”, John Charles Seely, UFO Report November 1979; The Secret History of Crop Circles, Terry Wilson
 

  


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Page last updated on August 17, 2011

© 2008 ICCRA - Jeffrey & Delsey Wilson.