The Lynden near-collision and Custer landing

January 12, 1965. Two reports came out of Whatcom County, Washington. One from a Border Patrol agent on a road near Lynden, one from a farmhouse at Custer. Compilers later stitched them into a single night. The record is less tidy than that.

About 1:00 a.m. Donald E. Flickinger, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, was on duty and driving toward Blaine Air Force Station. A bright disc appeared, illuminating the ground. It swooped down. The low-flying object, 30 feet in diameter, avoided a collision with the car at the last moment.

Flickinger got out. The object hovered for one minute. Then it accelerated up into the clouds at high speed with a sound of rushing air. By one account, Blaine Air Force Station was tracking it. A summary quoted by J. Allen Hynek has the officer describing something slightly domed, silent, and of a very intense white light.

Night, at a farm in Custer. Ted Phillips' catalogue gives 20:20 hours. Mrs. Jubert and three teenage daughters saw a very bright light coming toward the house. They took it for an airplane's landing lights and ran outside, afraid it would hit.

The light moved in low, in a straight line. Suddenly it lifted several hundred feet, cleared a clump of evergreens bordering the yard and dipped down on the far side of the tall trees. A round, glowing object with a dome on top. It remained grounded for several minutes. Then it ascended almost vertically in a burst of speed and disappeared toward the northeast.

The snow was about 16 inches deep. In it lay a melted circle, its size given as anything from 10 to 12 feet up to 30 feet. The ground beneath was described as scorched. A month later the circle reportedly still showed signs of the landing. Oval prints, about 8 inches long and 8 inches apart, ran in single file into the evergreens and stopped.

NICAP carried the case in its UFO Investigator in 1965. Physicist James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona phoned Flickinger and kept a file named "4CUSTER". Ted Phillips catalogued it as a physical trace case. Frank Edwards, Jacques Vallée in Passport to Magonia and Richard Hall in The UFO Evidence all told it. Brad Sparks lists it as Project Blue Book Unknown case #1596, though the Blue Book file itself is unconfirmed.

Doubts came from inside the story. Mrs. Jubert was emphatic that Flickinger had claimed to see nothing that night. NICAP editor Fran Ridge conceded no one is sure where documentation for the radar aspect is. Phillips found the radar claim difficult to believe and had mixed feelings overall. The single file tracks could point to hoaxers, though the light was intriguing.

The details drift, too. Silent or rushing air. A 12 foot circle or a 30 foot one. A 1:00 a.m. road encounter and an 8:20 p.m. landing, nineteen hours apart on the same date. One page adds that men in black later interviewed the witnesses, without a source. A possible Blue Book evaluation of "Astro (Meteor)" has never been tied firmly to the case.

Flickinger was not done with the sky. On August 19, 1966, near Donnybrook, North Dakota, the agent reported a silvery domed disc, a sighting that became Condon Case 8. Custer, meanwhile, keeps its circle in the snow, and its questions.