Dardanelle, Arkansas sighting (MUFON case 16644)

A witness reported that she left her home in Ola, Arkansas, at about 5:20 a.m. on April 20, 2009, to drop off a bill, according to the witness narrative in the April 2009 BAASS report. She wrote that she saw a star with a tail that came closer, hovered near Nebo Mountain and came within 100 feet of her. She described three lights on each side of a triangular figure. She wrote that her car made a vibrating sound like a flat tire, her phone was dead, and a flash lit the road and her vehicle. She reported no missing time. A dispatcher discussion recorded her as a nurse and said she compared the craft to a B-1 bomber.

A MUFON STAR team CAT 2 deployment was activated on April 25, 2009, per the report. Investigators reached Dardanelle at about 6:00 p.m. and went to the site with the witness, the interim report states. They noted power lines that sometimes crossed the road. The report later described them as 180,000 KV lines fed from Arkansas Nuclear One. The witness told them she watched the lights for about 20 minutes. She also described throat and hearing effects at work.

The investigators ran several checks. A compass moved about 80 degrees near the back left panel of her 2004 vehicle. A compass test at a Hyundai dealer on a 2009 model also showed needle movement, and the investigators wrote that this brought their findings into question. A magnet check of her sinus area found nothing abnormal. The phone worked, but its battery's internal fuse was blown. Curled weeds in the pasture were explained by weed killer. The witness resisted repeated requests to let them meet a co-worker.

The report concluded that this was a real event and the object was definitely unknown, and did not appear to be a military craft. It offered that the flash could have come from the craft nearing the high voltage wires or drawing energy from them, and that the noise could have been a low resonant frequency from the craft. A security officer at Arkansas Nuclear One said he would make inquiries, and the investigators proposed FOIA requests to the plant and the FAA. The June 2009 BAASS report reproduced the same case text with the same conclusion.