Piedmont UFO Wave: Coach Reggie Bone's Team on Highway 60

Piedmont is a small town in Wayne County, in the southeast Missouri Ozarks. Just west of it lies Clearwater Lake and its dam. In 1973, from late February into April, the area became the focus of a wave of night lights and close encounters. It started with a basketball coach.

Wednesday, February 21, 1973. Reggie Bone, coach at Clearwater High School, was heading home with members of his team after a game. Accounts differ on the opponent, the vehicle and the head count. One says Bone and five of his players. Another records six witnesses.

About 20 miles out of town, Bone noticed a light. They took it for a helicopter. Then it seemed to come down over a field. Dennis Hovis, KPWB news manager at the time, places the group on US Highway 60 near Ellsinore, turning onto Route 49 near Brushy Creek. A player shouted that the light was back. They stopped.

The object was about 200 yards away. "It was too dark to make out any size or shape," Bone said in 1973. "Its lights were red, green, amber and white." He described four lights that looked like portholes, and a bright shaft of light beaming down out of the sky. It hovered for about ten minutes. Nobody heard a thing. Then it shot straight up and vanished.

That same night, Edith Boatwright in Mill Spring watched a craft over power lines, with lit portholes and an umbrella-like top. It was not a helicopter, she said. On March 21, Jean Coleman and Cathy Leach were crossing the Clearwater dam when a blinking light rose from the lake. Coleman recalled that "every time there was a flash, you could see the flash was higher." On April 3, Mrs. Stucker reported a shiny dome-topped craft with tripod legs landing by trees along Highway 60. Broken trees were found in a 30-foot circle. Residents spoke of stalled cars and failing radios. By one count, more than 500 reports came in.

No official government investigation followed. Project Blue Book had closed in 1969. APRO field investigators looked into the Bone case. NICAP covered the wave in its UFO Investigator. Hayden C. Hewes of the International UFO Bureau called it "one of the most extraordinary."

Then a physicist stepped in. In April 1973, Harley D. Rutledge of Southeast Missouri State University launched Project Identification, funded by a $2,000 grant from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. His observers carried spectrum analyzers, Questar telescopes, cameras and frequency monitors. By 1988 they had logged 163 sightings. Rutledge described "pseudo-stars" that moved, and lights that seemed to interact with the observers.

Rutledge himself said many reports were aircraft or atmospheric effects. Not all of them. He never endorsed an extraterrestrial explanation. Robert Sheaffer reviewed Rutledge's 1981 book for Skeptical Inquirer in 1982 and did not accept its claims of interaction. No specific hoax has been tied to the Bone sighting. Hovis put it plainly: "Many reports were unfounded, but many were unexplained and remain unexplained today."

Fifty years on, Missouri made it official. Signed by Gov. Mike Parson on July 6, 2023, SB 139 named Piedmont and Wayne County the "UFO Capitals of Missouri." In June 2024 a park opened with a 16-foot UFO. And it all began with a coach, a team and a row of lights over a field.