The Fyffe UFO
Believe it or not, Alabama residents have had their fair share of close encounters with unidentified flying craft.
There’s an abduction story or two from the northern part of the state (one of which I deeply love and will share in the near future), but the UFO encounter that took place in and around Fyffe is miles above the rest.
Situated about an hour and a half to the southeast of Huntsville, Fyffe is an unassuming town in Dekalb County with an encounter story that still affects it to this day. It’s made such an impact on the people who saw it, that it’s still commemorated yearly during their UFO Days Festival.
The first witness claimed to have seen the craft on February tenth, 1989. On the eleventh, it was sighted by a woman who called it in to the local police department. She described the craft as being curved, rimmed with green lights, and having a particular large, bright light towards it’s apparent center. Police Chief Charles Garmany and one of his deputies responded to the call, driving out to investigate the area where the craft was seen. On their way to the location, headed down County Road 43, the craft passed over their cruiser. They pulled over, got out, and watched it fly over them. The ship was completely silent, moving very slowly, and shaped (according to the pair) something like a banana (the photo on the link to this post is a supposed photograph taken of the craft in the days leading up to the sheriff’s encounter).
They stood and watched the craft in silent awe as it passed overhead and out of view. Suddenly, they were stricken with a compulsion to follow the craft and see where it was going. They hopped back in their car and sped off to catch back up with up. Maintaining a close distance behind the craft was easy as, once it again, it was moving very slowly. Most interestingly to the sheriff, the ship would occasionally raise up, possibly thousands of feet overhead to where it could barely be seen, only to eventually drift back down as low as twenty or thirty feet above the ground. The officers followed it for as long as they could, leaving County Road 43 and pursuing the craft down old, unpaved roads and across empty fields. Eventually, they reached a point where they could no longer follow it. They pulled off the road, made a call over their radio to a different nearby precinct, and those officers continued their pursuit.
As Garmany watched from the side of the road as the craft drifted off into the distance, he was once again struck by it’s silence. Although he was in later years, due to ridicule he and his deputy faced as they came forward with the story and it hit the national circuit, hesitant to call it a UFO, he knew it was nothing like any conventional aircraft that existed at the time.
Hundreds of residents of Fyffe and surrounding townships would see the craft that week. Once the story went national as many as 4,000 tourists were drawn to the area, all hoping to see it.
For anyone hoping to visit the area, the Fyffe UFO Days Festival next takes place August 23rd, 2025 in Fyffe Town Park. If all goes well, I’ll be there so make sure to stop and say hey!
Stay weird!
-Scott