On the evening of 2 November 1971 sixteen-year-old Ron Johnson was tending sheep on a farm outside this Kansas town when, he said, a glowing object on three legs stood twenty metres away and then went up with a roar. His parents, running out at his shout, found a glowing ring on the ground about two and a half metres across. The ring was photographed. The soil inside it repelled water for months afterwards, and laboratory analysis found an unusual organic content; botanists suggested a fungal ring — but a fungal ring does not glow and does not appear in a minute. The case remains one of the few in the subject where the argument is not about a story but about soil analysis.

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Rachel and the Extraterrestrial Highway

Rachel is a tiny desert settlement in Nevada with a population of fewer than 100 residents, situated along State Route 375, officially designated as the Extraterrestrial Highway. As the closest civilian community to the top-secret Area 51 military installation (Groom Lake), it has become a global pilgrimage site for UFO enthusiasts, aviation buffs, and paranormal researchers.