Stephenville Texas! Start Designing Your Rose Parade Float Now!

Stephenville, Texas is about 70 miles west of Fort Worth, and it's suddenly being called the new Roswell. I have family in Stephenville, so this is especially interesting to me.

View a previous article here.

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

UFOs put Stephenville in world spotlight
BY BUD KENNEDY

Stephenville's latest close encounter is weirder than any light in the sky.

Stephenville is under assault — not by Martians, but by people hunting them.

The phones haven't stopped ringing at Steve Allen's trucking company in nearby Glen Rose. He's the guy who was out Jan. 7 watching the sunset at a friend's house near Selden when they all saw some weird flashing lights.

Now, he can't work for all the phone calls from London and around the world.

Some of the callers are scarier than space aliens.

"I'll be OK," he joked Tuesday, "as long as I don't get abducted."

I couldn't even get a call through to county Constable Leroy Gaitan. He told reporters that he and his son, 8, saw the lights from nearby Dublin.

All I can say is, if space aliens were hovering over Texas last week, then maybe that explains the Cowboys. The Stephenville newspaper, the Empire-Tribune, actually broke the story Thursday. But as far as I can tell, absolutely nobody in Texas paid attention until after Dallas was knocked out of the football playoffs.

The news finally went national Monday.

But technically, we all got scooped.

On Dec. 11 — more than a month ago — a Scottish writer and evangelist wrote exactly what would happen.

Catherine Brown , 43 and a mother of four, wrote about a heavenly vision predicting a "stunning star" over Texas that would make "front-line news."

I'm not kidding.

She posted this last month to the Web site for Elijah List Ministries, an Oregon-based publishing house that seems like sort of a clearinghouse for end-of-the-world religious prophecy:

"I see Texas ablaze and a stunning star, like the star from the East rising over the land. I hear the Spirit of the Lord saying to: 'Watch for cosmic signs and wonders in Texas.'

"He said there will be a cosmological phenomenon that scientists cannot explain, and the media will carry as front-line news.

"People will begin to ask about 'the Light.' ... For a period of four months -- from Christmas to Easter -- there will be a window of opportunity for salvations, signs, healings and wonders in Texas."

Brown has never seen Texas in her life, she said Tuesday by phone from her office at Gatekeepers Global Ministries in Ayrshire, Scotland.

"I saw this huge light over Texas," she said "It was actually just a short vision. When I saw the news today, I thought — how interesting."

In 2003, she predicted a rare earthquake in the Netherlands.

In Glen Rose, Allen said he hopes to talk with Brown. He had been quoted by The Associated Press saying that Texans are curious about the flying lights because "this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it’s the end of times."

A pilot, Allen said he is a greeter at a Baptist church near Chalk Mountain.

"I knew it wasn't like anything we've ever seen before in these parts," he said. "It definitely gave you a Biblical flashback."

Most experts are crediting a more worldly source: military training or defense aircraft testing, maybe pilots testing the giant flares that fire off in a circle of flame around aircraft to divert missiles.

This isn't the first time folks around Stephenville have seen weird things fly.

In 1897, six years before the Wright Brothers' maiden flight, farmer C.L. McIlhany of Stephenville told The Dallas Morning News that he and more than 20 other leading citizens had seen an "aerial monster" 60 feet long land in his pasture.

The aircraft had a pilot and engineer from New York, McIlhany said, who claimed they were testing it for investors and landed to make repairs.

In yet another good prediction, McIlhany is quoted as saying: "What you reckon is going to happen when dynamiters get to riding in airships and dropping bombs down on folks and cities? Is this world ready for airships?"

Apparently, they're always ready in Stephenville.

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