FBIUnresolvedAmbiguous
Orange fireballs circling — Palestine, Texas, July 1947
~Jul 1947Palestine, Texas
⟳ Deeper read pending. This record is from the FBI 62-HQ-83894 flying-disc file, whose cursive, clippings and faint scans are under-read by automated OCR. It is flagged for a vision-transcription pass and likely undercounts what the source contains — see the documents collection note.
Analysis — our summary
Multiple witnesses in Palestine, Texas observed orange basketball-sized balls of fire in July 1947. The objects were seen circling, with up to 12 observed simultaneously at one point. One female witness reportedly fired a rifle at the objects. No official explanation was recorded in the partial file content available.
As reported — verbatim from the document
“Multiple witnesses saw orange basketball-sized balls of fire, circling, one woman fired a rifle at them; 12 balls at once at one point.”
Analyst notes — caveats & confidence
SUB_A file was only partially readable due to file size. Multiple civilian witnesses. Twelve simultaneous objects is the highest count in any single incident in this batch. Confidence lowered for truncated source and OCR quality.
Provenance
Source document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_SUB_A.pdf
Document typecase file compilation
Reporting agencyFBI
Source pages124
DeclassifiedFirst public at this release (2026)
Held classified~79 years (≥, to this release)
Extraction confidence LowHow cleanly this record could be parsed from the source — driven by legibility & redaction. It is not a measure of how credible or anomalous the sighting is.