Reported incident: near Seymour, Indiana, December 1953; exact day not remembered. The report’s weather enquiry covers 8–15 December. Official report: 13 January 1954. Public release: PURSUE Release 07, 23 October 2026. Original file reviewed by UKPX on 10 November 2026.
Two people travelling by car near Seymour described a pair of white, cloudy rings, each with four bright points of light. They said the objects descended together, remained level while apparently hovering and then departed rapidly on an upward course. They stopped outside the car to listen but reported no sound.
The account survives in a report from Atterbury Air Force Base. Its striking descriptions sit beside important gaps: no exact incident date, no physical evidence, no measured distance and no independent check of aircraft movements. The file preserves an unusual witness report; it does not establish what produced the appearance.
The people and the reporting chain
The report identifies the observers as Hiram and Gladys Jones of Seymour. Hiram Jones was a local druggist. The reporting NCO, Staff Sergeant Bruce C. F. Butler of the Reserve Information Office, described him as direct and honest, with no tendency to exaggerate within Butler’s knowledge. That is an assessment of the source’s character, not a technical validation of the sighting.
The account reached the Air Force indirectly. A doctor contacted Lieutenant Marvin Satin on 9 January after hearing Jones’s story. The doctor had mentioned a letter from his own son, serving with the Air Force in Saudi Arabia, about a supposed flying-saucer sighting. Jones then spoke about his experience. That separate overseas anecdote explains how the conversation began; it is not corroboration of the Indiana event.
Jones reportedly had told only three friends because he wanted to avoid ridicule. The report says his wife shared his conviction about what they had seen. However, the released bundle contains one compiled narrative, rather than two separate signed statements that can be compared for agreement or differences.
Two rings and four bright points
The description begins with a circular ring of smoke or cloudlike material lying in a plane. No upper or lower structure was visible. The colour was white and the appearance gaseous. There were two objects, staggered closely behind one another in a formation compared with two jets.
Each appearance included four equally spaced bright points in the same plane. These seemed to rotate slowly clockwise and to supply the surrounding white aura. The observers also described a bluish-white, vapour-like trail, comparing it with a jet taking off at night.
Those comparisons matter. The report does not supply a photograph, a drawing made by the witnesses, or measured dimensions. Jones would describe the objects as large but would not estimate their size or give a relative comparison. A ringlike appearance should therefore not be converted into a detailed solid spacecraft, nor should the bright points be labelled engines.
Approach, apparent hovering and departure
The first attraction was a brilliant moving light. The observers were travelling east and looked north at an estimated elevation of about 20 degrees. They described a steady descent along the line of approach, a stationary interval and then a sudden upward departure towards the southwest. The two appearances reportedly kept their formation.
The account distinguishes the apparent rotation while hovering from the departure: during take-off the four bright points were said to be fixed, two forward and two to the rear. It also describes a downward tilt on approach, level stability during the stationary phase and an upward tilt when leaving.
The language of extraordinary acceleration belongs to the observers and the report’s retelling of their impressions. There is no range measurement, timed angular track or radar record from which a physical speed or acceleration can be calculated. A convincing impression of speed is not the same thing as a measured performance.
The report separates approximately three to four minutes of observation from an overall five-to-six-minute episode that included two changes of car position and one change of direction. Those figures should not be collapsed into six uninterrupted minutes of close observation. The final viewing area was described as flat ground north of the built-up city, without nearby buildings. No binoculars or other optical aids were used.
The missing date limits the investigation
The recorded time is 00:02–00:08Z, with the light conditions described as between dusk and night. The observers could not remember the date exactly. The weather section addresses the week of 8–15 December 1953, but that enquiry is not proof of a particular day within it.
The weather summary lists changing cloud cover, intermittent light rain, drizzle, light snow and fog, and visibility varying markedly during the week. Because the day is uncertain, those weekly conditions cannot responsibly be assigned as the precise weather at the moment of the sighting.
The observers knew of no aircraft in the area. The report immediately qualifies that statement: an Air Force check through the relevant control and operations organisations was impossible without an exact date. This is a useful distinction between a witness seeing no conventional aircraft and investigators establishing that none was present.
The catalogue’s December date, the local filename’s 1954 label and the report’s January date refer to different aspects of the record. UKPX indexes the reported incident to 1953, retains the uncertainty about its day, and treats 13 January 1954 as the date of the surviving report.
What the six-page scan establishes
The PDF has six scanned pages, including two reverse sides with stamps and faint show-through. The substantive typed account occupies PDF pages 1, 3, 4 and 5. It records no physical evidence. It contains no photograph of the objects, no contemporaneous radar plot and no final identification.
Nor does this short record establish an extraterrestrial origin. Its value is the recoverable sequence: who reported the event, how the story reached the Air Force, what the observers described, and why the missing date prevented a straightforward traffic check. The uncertainty is part of the case, rather than an empty space to fill with later speculation.
Location on the map
The UKPX pin is a broad U.S. Census locality reference for Seymour, rounded to 38.95°N, 85.89°W. It is not a witness’s home, an exact roadside viewing point or an object position. The report prints an east-longitude label beside its Seymour coordinate; that is geographically inconsistent with Indiana and is not silently reused as an exact incident pin.
Read the original
Primary source: USAF, Headquarters 2466th Air Force Reserve Combat Training Center, Atterbury AFB, UFOB, 13 January 1954, reference AF607182; DOW-UAP-D164 original release and PURSUE catalogue record. All six original scan pages were examined. The official web download returned an access error during this check; the unchanged owner-supplied release copy is hosted above. The full PDF retains the original record; UKPX does not repeat private addresses as visitor destinations.
Related: Cases directory · UFO / UAP / USO.