First the radio quits. Then the headlights dim. Then the engine dies. Across a wet San Antonio roadside field, a civilian cook from Lackland Air Force Base sees a glowing egg-shaped object hovering near the ground.
At about 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday 5 November 1957, Lon Yarbrough was driving home on Old Frio City Road southwest of San Antonio.
He was 39 years old and worked as a civilian cook at Lackland Air Force Base.
According to the next day's San Antonio Light, the first strange thing was not the object. It was the car.
About 200 yards to his left was a glaring white light — “like a big neon,” as the newspaper rendered his description. Then the engine stopped.
Yarbrough estimated the luminous object at roughly 60 feet long and egg-shaped. After about ten seconds it rose sharply, levelled at perhaps 50 to 100 feet, crossed the road ahead of him and headed southeast.
As it departed he reported a whistling sound and a blast of warm air. When it disappeared, the radio and headlights came back on and the engine restarted.
Yarbrough is alone in his 1957 car southwest of San Antonio.
The entertainment radio reportedly stops before Yarbrough becomes focused on the object.
He then notices a glaring white object in a field roughly 200 yards to the left.
The car slows and comes to a stop while the object remains near the ground.
Yarbrough estimates it at about 60 feet long and compares its light to neon or fluorescent illumination.
The object rises, crosses the road ahead of the car and moves away with a whistle or swishing sound.
Yarbrough says he feels a gust or blast of heat as the object leaves.
Radio and lights return; the engine starts and Yarbrough drives away.
Project Blue Book's surviving Project 10073 Record Card independently preserves the main particulars of Yarbrough's account.
It lists a civilian ground visual sighting of one object on 5 November 1957, with a duration field of 53 seconds. The typed summary describes an oval object about 60 feet long, more blunt on one end, fluorescent in appearance, hovering near the ground about 200 yards from the road.
It also records the warm-air gust, swishing sound, radio/light failure and engine stoppage.
The evaluator's conclusion was not an identified aircraft, balloon, star, meteor or vehicle fault. It was: “Probably the result of an over active imagination.”
The surviving card does not show a documented site visit, engineering inspection of the car or named investigative method sufficient to explain the reported physical sequence.
Those later additions are not supported by the two strongest contemporary sources and should not be carried forward as fact.
The strongest ordinary explanation for the engine stopping is a moisture-sensitive ignition system.
NOAA station data for San Antonio on 5 November 1957 record measurable precipitation and both rain and fog flags. A 1957 distributor-and-points ignition system could misfire or stall when damp.
That makes “wet ignition” a legitimate case-specific hypothesis here in a way it was not at dry Levelland.
But it does not solve the full vehicle sequence. A wet distributor does not naturally explain dimming headlights or a radio failure, both of which draw from the broader electrical system.
And without a contemporaneous mechanical inspection, investigators cannot show whether one ordinary electrical fault actually caused all three effects.
Only days earlier, Levelland motorists had reported glowing objects and vehicle interference across West Texas.
The San Antonio newspaper explicitly framed Yarbrough's report against that news. It is therefore entirely reasonable to ask whether expectation, media exposure or imitation influenced his account.
That possibility has to remain on the table.
But one interesting point cuts the other way: Blue Book's card says Yarbrough's bright object did not illuminate the ground, whereas illumination of road and vehicle interiors was a prominent Levelland feature. A simple copycat story need not have included a detail that departed from the famous template.
This is a real inconsistency and should stay visible rather than being harmonised away.
The strongest part of the case is documentary: a named witness in next-day press and a matching Air Force record.
The weakest part is physical verification. There is no co-witness at the roadside, no object photograph, no radar track tied to the sighting and no surviving engineering report showing what happened inside the car.
That means the “electromagnetic interference” label describes Yarbrough's reported experience, not a measured field effect.