Mushroom Shaped UFO Sighting in Delphos Kansas in 1971

A very credible UFO encounter occurred in Delphos, Kansas in 1971. Sixteen year old Ron Johnson, along with his dog, was tending the family sheep when his attention was suddenly drawn to a mushroom-shaped UFO appearing in the night sky. It would be on November 2 that Ron would encounter this craft, which was covered with multicolored lights all across it's metallic surface. Incredibly the UFO was only about 75 feet from him, and amazingly it hovered only a few feet above the ground. Ron estimated the craft's diameter at 6-8 feet.

Stunned by what he was looking at, he tried to get a closer look, but the brilliant luminance of the craft did not allow him to make out any additional details. Unlike many other UFO reports, Ron described the craft as making a loud sound ,"like an old washing machine which vibrates". The glow of the object's bottom increased as it began to shoot up into the sky. Ron would later state that he was temporarily blinded by the brightness of the craft as it ascended. After he regained his sight and composure, he ran back to the family house to alert the others. The bright glow was now high in the sky, as it began to vanish from sight altogether.

Three family members came running around the side of the house to get a glimpse of the unusual phenomena. They arrived at the location, and were shocked to see a glowing ring in the ground, right below where the craft had hovered. Family members would later relate that the ground around the glow.. "felt strange, like a slick crust, as if the soil was crystallized." Ron's mother's fingers went numb, like she had been given a local anesthetic. Seeing nothing else of the craft, the family finally settled down for the night.

When dawn broke the next day, the family immediately returned to the sight of the glowing ring, and to their surprise, it was still there! The inside and outside of the ring were damp from a rain shower, but the ring itself was amazingly dry. The ring had a crusty appearance, as though the rain had simply ran off, leaving it bone dry. Slightly over a month later, after a snow fall, the white ice had melted both inside and outside of the ring, but the ring itself maintained the snow drift. Investigators experimented with the ring by removing snow from a section of it, and pouring water on the exposed part. The soil would not allow the water to pass through.

Further experimentation showed the ground under the ring to be dry to a depth of one foot. The ring itself was composed of a whitish substance, which was sent to a laboratory for analysis. The findings were as follows: [it was resolved into fibers which] were vegetal in nature and belonged to an organism of the order of Actinomycetales, which is an intermediate organism between bacteria and fungus... family actiniomycete, genus Nocardia... [and is] often found together with a fungus of the order Basidomycetes, which may flouresce under certain conditions... one possible interpretation is that high energy stimulation triggered the spectacular growth of the Nocardia and of an existing fungus, and caused the latter to flouresce. The experience of Ron Johnson is still considered as one of the best documented "ground trace" UFO cases of the past century, and is still considered "unexplained."