Encounter left women with welts, anxiety and a 90-minute blank
A still-unexplained UFO sighting involved three women from Casey County: Louise Smith, Mona Stafford and Elaine Thomas.
Their account: On the night of Jan. 9, 1976, the three were traveling in Smith's car on Highway 78 between Stanford and Hustonville when they saw a giant UFO glide over the car.
The next thing they knew it was 90 minutes later. They couldn't account for the time loss. The hands on Smith's wristwatch were spinning crazily, and the paint on the hood of her car had bubbled.
In addition to amnesia, they had swollen eyes, headaches, red welts on the backs of their necks, and terrifying feelings of anxiety.
Later, under hypnosis in separate sessions, they told an eerie story of being taken aboard a giant spacecraft and examined by 4-foot-tall aliens. The examination, they said, included having their eyeballs pulled out from their heads.
It sounded like three teenagers' idea of a practical joke -- but two of the women were grandmothers, and Smith was the home demonstration agent for the Casey County Extension Service of the University of Kentucky.
All three took polygraph tests administered by an examiner from the Lexington police department.
All three passed.
The mystery remains unsolved.