Lindale entity encounter — January 24, 1979

On January 24, 1979, twenty-year-old John Scott Cates stopped on a road north of Lindale, Texas, leaving his car running. At around 10 p.m. he reported a coloured beam or light from the sky, a static-like sensation that raised his hair, and two unusual aerial objects with a violet-red light moving between them. His next recollection was of being back at the car after a gap commonly described as about six hours. A ringing sound reportedly coincided with the engine starting again. Fuller versions add that his watch was approximately five and a half hours wrong and that holes were found in clothing. He also reported a diamond-shaped chest burn, singed hair and other physical symptoms after the incident. The case appears in Thomas Bullard's abduction catalogue, Richard Haines's vehicle-effects research and a September 1979 MUFON account associated with Richard Niemtzow. The missing interval and subsequent symptoms do not themselves establish a remembered onboard encounter: the available initial sequence supplies no reliable occupant appearance to illustrate. The plate therefore shows Cates, his car and the two reported objects together, with his clothing intact and without inventing beings or a medical scene.