Case description
In a 1998 interview with journalist Len Wells, Norman Massie recalled an experience he dated to June 1923, when he was ten. He said he had led horses through a gate on the family farm near Mount Erie in northern Wayne County, Illinois. Looking back into the pasture, he saw a lighted metallic object and approached to about 50 feet.
Massie described three supports and a domed top with openings, its surface resembling melted glass. Five short blond men were visible aboard, one seated while four moved around. He believed he heard them address the seated figure as their commander and say repairs were complete. After about five minutes, the object reportedly rose, retracted its supports, climbed roughly 200 feet and sped west. The account describes overheard speech, not communication directed to the boy.
Massie said his parents dismissed the story and discouraged him from discussing it. He later told his son, an Air Force officer, in 1990. That family response is not military verification. Wells's article preserves a recollection about 75 years after the claimed event; no contemporary 1923 record is established. Only June is supported, not an exact day. The reconstruction therefore retains the retrospective label and treats interior arrangement and clothing as approximations, while showing the reported five occupants and tripod-supported object.
