By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Bet you didn’t know that a “strange illuminated object” was sighted in rural Bluffton. It occurred one month after a “flying disc” was recovered from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, home of one of the most well-known extraterrestrial area  in the United States.

One can only imagine how history might have struck us, had the object crashed in rural Bluffton – no matter what might have been discovered in such a wreck. 

We might have become the Roswell of the Midwest. However, with 2024 alive in the oddest of conspiracy theories, perhaps we still have a chance to “make the grade” as the News account below reports.

The rural Bluffton nighttime sighting was reported on the front page of the Bluffton News on July 17, 1947. The complete story follows, and we provide a few observations.

• Bluffton News editor Clarence “Ted” Biery was grounded in reality when he wrote the account. 

• He placed the story it at the very top center of the front page. That’s where every reader or potential newsstand purchaser would view it.

• Then, in a slightly sarcastic, but straight-forward news report, he wrote that “Bluffton made the grade in the flying saucer parade last week.”

His account follows, and no follow-up story appeared in the News that summer.

Strange object
Seen here like
Flying saucers

Farmer reports seeing lighted
Body at night at treetop height

No trace is found in search
Throughout area on 
Following morning

July 17, 1947, Bluffton News – Bluffton made the grade in the flying saucer parade last week when Henry G. Reichenbach, 74, farmer, saw a strange illuminated object flying at tree top height over his farm, four miles northwest of Bluffton, about 11 p.m.

Click HERE for the rest of the story.