The Missouri Cow Lift

The cow floated. Ron and Paula Watson say they watched it through binoculars on their Missouri farm in 1983. Two small silver beings examined the black animal and then levitated it, apparently paralysed, up a ramp into a landed craft. Our telling describes the craft as green and cone-shaped. Beside the craft stood a tall figure the couple described as reptilian. In the outside record it is a green-skinned lizard man with slit pupils, and a creature like Bigfoot stood with it. A neighbour later confirmed, the account says, that a cow had gone missing.

What is on the record

Our one telling gives the archive two claimants, Ron and Paula. The case is known from Linda Moulton Howe's 1993 book Glimpses of Other Realities, and the later retellings all lead back to her interview with the Watsons. No contemporary press report, police record or official interest has been found, and no one has proposed an explanation. The Watsons are the only source for what happened.

Our telling gives the couple only their first names. The outside record supplies the surname Watson, and this page uses it. The farm's location is less certain. It is often placed near Mount Vernon in Lawrence County, but that has not been confirmed, and the archive files the case under Missouri as a whole. The date is commonly given as July 1983. The archive records only the year.

The neighbour's missing cow is the one detail that points beyond the couple. It reaches us through their own account rather than from the neighbour.

Why it sits where it does

The case grades L3 because the archive counts two claimants describing one connected event. They are a couple who watched together, and their story comes to us through one interviewer. Two pairs of eyes are worth more than one, but they were never separate sources. What the Watsons saw on their hillside is not resolved here.