Long Beach police reported "well over a hundred calls" during this same period.
During November and December of 1957 it was a situation of you name the city and there was a UFO report from there. Trying to sift them out and put them in a book would be like sorting out a plateful of spaghetti. And if you succeeded you would have a document the size of the New York City telephone directory.
Most of the reports were explained.
The Levelland, Texas, sightings were written off as "St. Elmo's Fire." The military police at the White Sands Proving Ground saw the moon through broken clouds and the crew of the Coast Guard ship Seabago were actually tracking several separate aircraft.
The 1957 flap was as great as the previous record breaking 1952 flap. During 1957 the Air Force received 1178 UFO reports. Of these, only 20 were placed on the "unknown" list.
In comparison to 1957, the first months of 1958 were a doldrums. Reports drifted in at a leisurely pace and the Air Force UFO investigating teams, blooded during the avalanche of 1957, picked off solutions like knocking off clay pipes in a shooting gallery.
In Los Angeles, a few clear nights drove the Air Defense Command nuts. People could actually see the sky and the sight of so many stars frightened them.
Unusual atmospherics in Georgia made stars jump and radars go crazy; and a balloon, hanging over Chicago at dusk, cost the taxpayers another several thousand dollars but the pilots made their flight pay.
A statement by Dr. Carl Jung, renowned Swiss psychologist, was widely publicized in July 1958. Dr. Jung was quoted as saying, in a letter to a U.S. saucer club, "UFO's are real." When Dr. Jung read what he was supposed to have written the Alps rang with screams of "misquote."
No one got excited until the early morning of September 29th.