Cape Girardeau UFO Crash
In April 1941, a Baptist minister was called to pray over the victims of a 'plane crash' outside Cape Girardeau. What he found wasn't a plane - it was a circular craft with strange beings inside. If true, this predates Roswell by six years and remains one of ufology's most intriguing claims.
A deathbed confession revealed what may be America’s first UFO crash retrieval.
The Story
The account comes from Charlotte Mann, whose grandfather, Reverend William Huffman, allegedly served as a Baptist minister in Cape Girardeau in 1941. According to Mann, one spring evening the local sheriff’s office contacted her grandfather, asking him to come to the scene of a plane crash outside town to pray for the victims.
What Reverend Huffman found when he arrived wasn’t anything like a conventional aircraft. The wreckage was circular, a disc-shaped craft that had come down in a field. More disturbing were the bodies - small humanoid beings with large eyes, their appearance unlike anything human. Military personnel arrived shortly after and took control of the scene, swearing everyone present to secrecy.
The Family’s Testimony
Reverend Huffman reportedly told his wife about the incident that night, and the story became a carefully guarded family secret. He kept a photograph of the beings and the craft, which he showed to family members before his death. The photo was confiscated years later by men claiming to be government agents who visited his widow.
Charlotte Mann came forward with the story in 1991, describing how her grandmother had confirmed the account multiple times over the years. She described her grandfather as a deeply honest man who would never fabricate such a story, particularly given how seriously he took his religious calling.
Historical Significance
If accurate, the Cape Girardeau incident predates the famous Roswell crash by six years, making it potentially one of the earliest UFO crash retrievals in American history. The timeline also places it before the modern UFO era that began with Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting.
Skeptics point to the lack of physical evidence and the fact that the story emerged decades later through family testimony alone. However, supporters note that Reverend Huffman had no reason to lie to his family, and the consistency of the account across multiple family members lends it credibility. The case remains classified among researchers as unverified but historically significant.