Fort Thompson Lights: Police and Sheriff Sighting over the Crow Creek Reservation

Fort Thompson sits on the east bank of the Missouri River, just north of Big Bend Dam. It is the largest settlement on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, in Buffalo County, South Dakota. On Monday night, October 10, 1966, people across the region looked up.

About 9 p.m., Roger Huston, a rancher, reported that "a bluish light appeared to be hanging over" Fort Thompson. Shortly afterward, Edgar Loudner of the U.S. Public Health Service heard an unusual sound, seemingly overhead. "It sounded like a jet motor or a car on a gravel road," he said. Others agreed.

Some 20 miles west of Fort Thompson, Highway Patrolman Patrick Gribbin of Kennebec and Lyman County Sheriff Lee Roberts watched an unusual light toward the east for about one and one-half hours. Game Warden Floyd Gaarder of Presho followed it through a spotting scope. "It was changing color," Gribbin said. "It looked like a beacon. The colors rotated." Slowly, it seemed to move farther away and higher. "It was never close, but it was larger than a star."

The colours went from white to bluish-green to red. About two hours after the first report, Fort Thompson police said the light had brightened. Another object had joined it. Its lights seemed to rotate. Red to green to yellow. A United Press International report in the Los Angeles Times said both resembled "lighted merry-go-rounds".

In Fort Thompson, residents counted at least seven unusual lights to the east at one time. "You can see seven," said Bureau of Indian Affairs policeman Joe Blacksmith. Numerous people reported an object with blinking lights.

In Kimball, Brule County Deputy Sheriff Pat McGregor was watching too. "Whatever it is, it has red, green and white flashing lights," he said. It was too bright, he said, to be a star. The distance was anyone's guess. "Maybe it's 20 miles and maybe its 1,000."

The sightings ran past 11 p.m. Residents of Kennebec, Presho, Kimball and Pierre reported unusual "stars, planets or something". The Associated Press wrote that people in a 100-mile radius of Fort Thompson were stirred up. The motor patrol said no aircraft was reported in the area. Still, the officers would not go so far as to call the lights flying saucers. Asked about saucers, McGregor said only "I don't know," with a sigh.

McGregor raised the obvious question himself. "It could be a planet," he said. Bright stars and planets near the horizon twinkle hard, seem to change colour, and climb as they rise in the east. The colour cycling, the slow drift and the uncertain distance all fit that pattern, though nobody has yet checked what was in the eastern sky that night. Loudner's own comparison to a jet motor leaves room for an ordinary sound. No hoax was ever alleged.

No Project Blue Book file has surfaced, and the case is absent from the list of Blue Book unidentified cases for 1966. NICAP's chronology for that night records only Wanaque, New Jersey, where reservoir police reported a bright object of their own. The Los Angeles Times ran both in a single United Press International report, which called them apparently unrelated. What remains is a pair of wire reports, nine named witnesses, and lights nobody could name.