James Collins's Lost Night

James Collins was on his way home from his television repair shop in Chesapeake, Virginia, when a large oblong object "alighted in the street in front of him". He believed he was taken inside it. He remembered the craft as made of "a glass like substance" and transparent. Its crew were "undersized creatures similar to members of the human race, probably not more than 4 feet tall", dressed in ordinary trousers and T-shirts. He believed they carried him some distance and brought him back to where they had picked him up about an hour later.

What is on the record

The source is a single FBI headquarters memorandum dated 18 January 1967 in the Bureau's UFO file 62-HQ-83894. It was released by the Department of War on 8 May 2026 in Section 10 of that file. Its title dates the sighting to 17 January. Collins rang the Bureau at 4.10 a.m. and spoke to the night supervisor, Special Agent A. R. Ware. He said he was calling from his workshop.

The memo records his state with care. Collins "spoke in a coherent manner although he appeared to be under certain emotional strain". He said he had not been drinking. He could not account for the time between 6 p.m. and 4 a.m., and had no recollection of being anywhere but his workshop from 8 p.m. onwards. Ten hours, or eight, sits awkwardly beside his own estimate of a one-hour trip, and the memo makes no attempt to reconcile them. A check of Bureau indices found nothing on him. Copies went to the Liaison Section among others, and the memo closes: "The above is being furnished for your information." Nothing follows in the file: one page, no sign of a later investigation, and the archive holds no other account of the night.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Collins is the only witness and the account is his alone. No independent testimony sits beside the memo in the archive, and the tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What happened to James Collins that night is not resolved here.