The Stephenville lights

On 8 January 2008, dozens of Stephenville, Texas, residents reported bright lights overhead after dark. The Air Force later said F-16s had been flying in the area.

Stephenville is a dairy town about 100 miles from Dallas, to the southwest, according to Brian Dunning of Skeptoid. On the evening of 8 January 2008, residents saw white lights over Highway 67, first in one horizontal arc, later in upright parallel lines. Steve Allen, a local pilot, put the strobes at roughly a mile long and half a mile wide, moving at roughly 3,000 mph. Nobody reported hearing a sound.

NPR reported on 16 January that several residents, a pilot among them, described a large, silent craft, lit up brightly and moving fast at low altitude. Officials said there was an ordinary explanation. Locals held that the object was bigger, quieter and quicker than any aircraft. ABC News reported that witnesses put the object at a mile long, and that the local Stephenville Empire-Tribune had calls from as far off as Finland and Japan.

At first the Air Force Reserve, based in nearby Fort Worth, dismissed the reports and said it had no fighters there. NPR reported on 24 January that officials had reversed that and admitted that close to a dozen F-16s had flown over Stephenville that night. Wikipedia sums up the military's explanation as a misidentified training maneuver.