Frank Halstead Sighting

1955: Huge Cigar-Shaped UFO Seen Over Death Valley
On November 1, 1955, astronomer Frank Halstead, the director of Darling Observatory in Duluth, Minnesota, and his wife, Ann, were traveling to California aboard the Challenger, an express train of the Union Pacific Railroad. As the train sped across Death Valley in eastern California, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Las Vegas, Nevada, the couple spied a UFO. Here's the story in Frank Halstead's own words:
"My wife Ann was sitting next to the window and she called my attention to an object which she saw -- something moving just above the (Panamint) mountain range. Our train was running parallel to this range of mountains, and this thing was moving in the same direction as the train, just above the mountains."
"At first I thought the thing was a blimp -- you know, one of those cigar-shaped dirigibles... But as I watched it, I realized that it could not be a blimp -- they are only about two hundred feet long -- and this thing was gigantic. It was about eight hundred feet long. I could estimate that because it was so close to the mountain range, where trees and clumps of trees were visible for comparison."
"While Ann and I were watching this cigar-shaped thing -- for four or five minutes as it paced the train -- we noticed that another object had joined it. This second object appeared very suddenly in back of the first one -- behind it, that is.""It was a disc-shaped thing. In fact, both objects were very shiny, we noticed. But this second one was definitely disc-shaped. If my estimate on the size of the first object was approximately correct, then this disc would have been one hundred feet in diameter -- flat on the bottom with a low dome on the top side.""My wife and I watched the pair of them for approximately two -- maybe three -- minutes. They were moving at about the speed of the train and they seemed very close to the top of the ridge -- not more than five hundred feet above it, I should say. Then they began to rise, slowly at first, and a few seconds later, much faster. In a matter of seconds, fifteen or twenty, they had risen so high that we could no longer see them from our train window."
(See Flying Saucers: Serious Business by Frank Edwards, Bantam Books, New York, NY 1966, pages 20 and 21)

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