The Seymour Johnson AFB Flight-Line Lights, Goldsboro

Autumn 1966 was a busy season for strange lights over North Carolina. In late September, five Goldsboro fishermen led by mechanic Ray Capps reported three red, moon-sized, silent lights hovering overhead at Bogue Inlet. In October, an 18-year-old near Lattimore twice saw silent objects with red blinking lights around 9 p.m. A woman near Waco reported something similar. Goldsboro itself sits beside Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

The night of 23 October 1966. The hour was never recorded. "A number of Goldsboro residents, including airmen at nearby Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, reported having seen unidentified flying objects last night," the Associated Press wrote. "At least 10 persons said they had seen objects flashing green and red lights in the sky."

One woman saw a flashing light over the flight line at the base. She phoned the base radar station. The airmen there said they saw the object. But they "couldn't pick it up on radar." No shape. No size. No direction or speed. Just lights flashing red and green above an airfield, seen by eye and absent from the screen.

The story moved on the wire under the dateline "GOLDSBORO, N.C., Oct. 24 (AP)." The New York Times printed it on 25 October 1966. Because the AP report said "last night," the sighting most likely took place on the night of the 23rd.

The same roundup carried a second report. In Randolph Township, New Jersey, Sgt. Robert Lizum and Patrolman Leslie Mills described an object "like a flare dancing across the horizon." NICAP later logged that case at 8:45 p.m. EDT on 23 October, in a different version. One policeman watched a bright yellow oval approach slowly at low altitude. It sped away when he shone a spotlight on it.

No follow-up has been found. There is no known Project Blue Book case number for Goldsboro in October 1966, though the full Blue Book microfilm has not been searched. No statement from the base or the Air Force has surfaced, and NICAP's 1966 chronology has no Goldsboro entry. A Condon Committee radar case from the summer of 1966 appears in searches, but it concerns a missile site and is a different event.

The Goldsboro News-Argus for those days may hold the local story behind the wire item, perhaps with names and times. It has not yet been checked.

No source offered an explanation. Flashing red and green are the colours of standard aircraft navigation and anti-collision lights, common near an active air base. Bright stars or planets low in the sky can also twinkle red and green. Either would fit a light seen by eye but missing from radar. Without times or directions, neither can be tested.

The Goldsboro lights survive in a single newspaper clipping, preserved in the press archive of ufologist Patrick Gross. No books, documentaries or podcasts have taken the case up. Yet one detail stands out. A civilian saw something over a military flight line and called the radar operators directly. Airmen confirmed seeing it with their own eyes, but the radar stayed empty.