The Danville State Trooper Chase and Radio Failure (1957)

Early November 1957 was a restless week for the American sky. The Levelland case in Texas, on 2 and 3 November, had just set the pattern for reports of car and radio interference. Sputnik II went up on 3 November. Sightings poured in from across the country.

On the evening of Wednesday, November 6, trooper Calvin Showers of the Illinois State Police was on duty at the Vermilion County Jail in Danville. A farmer north of town phoned. A lighted object, he said, was "right overhead," moving "in a southeasterly direction." Then a service-station operator at Moore's Corner, about 10 miles north on Route 1, called to report something overhead moving "northwesterly." Showers and fellow trooper John Matulis headed north to look.

About four miles from Danville, they saw what looked like a star. But it was much larger than any star, about the size of a softball. "It was round and had a glow to it," Matulis said. "It changed from white to a bright orange." Showers watched it brighten and then dim somewhat, passing from brilliant white to amber to orange.

The light appeared so low in the sky that they gave chase. It seemed to change direction, then moved off to the south-west. The troopers followed it west and south-west, back through Danville toward Oakwood and Sugar Creek Road, almost to Fairmount. Then the light flew out of sight, and they turned back. The chase covered about 15 miles.

Then there was the radio: the troopers lost contact from a point north on the Dixie until they reached Main and Gilbert Streets in Danville. They tried to call the jail four or five times but got nothing, although the radio was in good working order before and after they saw the object. Asked what they had seen, Showers kept it short. "I don't know. That's for somebody else to figure out."

Their superior, Lt. John T. Henry at District 10 headquarters in Urbana, stood behind them. "Showers and Matulis are veteran troopers. I'm sure they saw it exactly as they described it in their report."

NICAP listed the case in The UFO Evidence in 1964, as police-witness evidence, as an electromagnetic effect and as an example of colour change. Historian Loren E. Gross later told the full story, drawing on the Danville Commercial-News. In 2018, sceptic Tim Printy proposed another answer: Venus. The planet was a bright evening star low in the south-western sky, the direction the troopers ended up chasing. It set at about 7:15 p.m. A low planet can seem to change colour and flicker as it sinks, and can appear to keep pace with a moving car. Printy treated the callers' opposite directions as separate reports and put the radio dead spot down to something unrelated, such as poor reception.

He admitted the doubt: "While we cannot say for certain that Venus was the source of this report because of the lack of a definitive time line, one has to give the possibility serious consideration." The timeline is the sticking point. One account puts the start around 6:00 p.m. Another suggests about 7:30 p.m., when Venus would already have set. And the radio failure remains unexplained.

No Project Blue Book file for Danville has been found. There are no photographs and no radar. What remains is two veteran troopers, a glowing light low over the Illinois fields, and a radio that fell silent on the Dixie.