Marissa, IL being encounter — December 21, 1974

Rodney Walta, his girlfriend, and a younger brother reported unusual objects while driving near Marissa, Illinois, on December 21, 1974. A retrospective in the December 1989 MUFON UFO Journal describes an early-evening dome-shaped object with pale and blue antenna-like structures, initially moving alongside the road at a distance. The same report distinguishes a later observation that night. After stopping, the group described a more tubular object hovering as if searching the ground. They said that a narrow emission appeared to draw particles upward. When the object moved toward them, they decided to leave. The condensed Hatch entry also mentions a figure and an object near a house roof, but does not establish where that detail fits within the sequence. The separate shapes and phases should therefore not be turned into one precisely documented mechanism or a single uninterrupted encounter. The account's ground-collection description is the witnesses' interpretation of what they saw. The plate depicts the roadside observation, with the car, object, and light reconstructed.