Texas Gulf Coast Disc Sighting
October 1920 - Near Freeport, Texas, USA
In October 1920, more than a quarter-century before the modern flying-saucer era began, fisherman C. B. Alves claimed to have witnessed four extraordinary objects along the Texas Gulf Coast, roughly 50 miles north of Freeport.
Alves was fishing with several companions at about 3:00 a.m. when four strange craft appeared in the darkness. He later described each one as looking “like two big silver plates set edge to edge.” They appeared to measure approximately 25 feet across and 10 feet thick at the center, with smooth metallic-looking surfaces. Despite their disc-like shape, Alves specifically noted that the objects did not appear to be spinning.
The encounter became especially dramatic when the first object approached to within an estimated 100 yards of the fishermen. It then suddenly veered away, climbed into the sky, and accelerated southward. Three identical discs followed behind it.
Although the four objects were alike in shape and size, their illumination differed. According to Alves, the first and fourth discs emitted a brilliant pastel-pink light, while the second and third glowed an equally intense pale green. After passing the witnesses, the formation rapidly sped away and disappeared into the night.
Remarkably, the incident allegedly occurred 27 years before Kenneth Arnold's famous 1947 sighting popularized the term “flying saucer.” Alves apparently did not publicly relate his experience until decades later. His account appeared in the February 1955 issue of Fate Magazine in its “Report from the Readers” section and was later discussed by UFO historian Jerome Clark in the third edition of The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning (2018).
Alves's delayed report was not unusual. Following the explosion of public interest in UFOs after 1947, Fate began receiving accounts from readers who claimed to have witnessed strange aerial phenomena many years earlier. Before the flying-saucer era, witnesses lacked the terminology that later became associated with UFOs and instead described such things as “mystery aircraft,” “unexplained lights,” or “shining orbs.” Some apparently reconsidered old experiences only after reports of similarly strange objects became widely known.
There is, however, an important historical problem with the Alves story: the witness has never been conclusively identified. Searches of the 1920 U.S. Census show that the surnames Alves and Alvis were present in Texas, but no obvious individual matching the initials C. B. Alves has been established. One possible match, Canrodo Alves of Terrell, Texas, was only 11 years old in 1920 and lived roughly 300 miles northwest of Freeport, making him an unlikely candidate. Alves may also have lived outside Texas and simply been visiting the Gulf Coast when the alleged encounter occurred.
With no known contemporary 1920 report and the story appearing publicly decades afterward, the case is impossible to independently verify today. Nevertheless, the description is striking: four silver discs, glowing pink and green, sweeping low over the Texas coast in the darkness of an October morning—27 years before “flying saucers” became part of the American vocabulary.