Damon deputies' triangle
Late on 3 September 1965 two Brazoria County deputies on Highway 36 near Damon, Texas, watched a huge dark triangle with purple and blue lights rise from a field and light up their patrol car.
1965 CE · 29.20, -95.65 · status: unexplained
The account
Chief Deputy Billy McCoy and Deputy Robert Goode said the object, perhaps 200 feet long, came close enough that Goode felt heat on his arm. They fled at over 100 mph, then returned and saw it again. An officer from Ellington AFB interviewed them for Project Blue Book.
The sceptical view
Blue Book listed it as unidentified. No physical traces were reported.
The researched reading
Two deputies described a huge, close triangle that lit their car and that the Air Force could not explain. Without other witnesses or traces, it stays a strong but unconfirmable account.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Genuinely anomalous | 30% | Two law officers describe a 200-foot triangle at close range, lighting their car and felt as heat, and Project Blue Book listed it as unidentified. |
| Something known, misidentified | 20% | A dark shape with coloured lights over flat coastal farmland near Houston could be a blimp or an aircraft at night; size and distance of lights in the dark are notoriously hard to judge. |
| Secret human technology | 16% | Ellington AFB and NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center were nearby; a secret airship or experimental craft cannot be excluded, though none matching is known. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 14% | Two frightened officers feeding each other’s impressions in the dark, during the August–September 1965 wave of reports across Texas. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 8% | Some writers compare low, close luminous objects to ball-lightning-like phenomena, without evidence here. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 6% | Ground fog lit by distant lights can look like a shape, though the heat felt is hard to explain this way. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Both deputies were respected and Blue Book found them sincere; no sign of invention. |
| Undetermined | 1% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
Official position: Project Blue Book recorded the case as unidentified after an Ellington AFB officer interviewed the deputies.