CASH–LANDRUM INCIDENT SITE
Highway — Dayton, Texas
Status: Natural site · Access: Open to public
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/cashlandrum-incident-site-dayton-texas/

The 1980 road encounter that left three witnesses with radiation-like burns.

On December 29, 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Colby Landrum reported a glowing diamond-shaped craft escorted by helicopters on a road near Dayton; all three developed burns and illness afterward, and sued the U.S. government. The case is cited as the best-documented alleged physical-harm UFO encounter.

On the night of December 29, 1980, Betty Cash was driving Vickie Landrum and Landrum's seven-year-old grandson Colby home along Farm-to-Market Road 1485 through the pine woods northeast of Dayton, Texas. Ahead of them the sky lit up. What they described was a diamond-shaped object, glowing and venting flame downward, hovering just above the treetops — and then, ringed by what they counted as roughly two dozen helicopters, climbing away.

WHAT THE DOCTORS DOCUMENTED
Cash had gotten out of the car; the door handle and dashboard burned to the touch. Within days all three were sick — burns, blistering, vomiting, hair loss — symptoms their physicians compared to radiation exposure. Cash was hospitalized repeatedly. The witnesses sued the United States government for twenty million dollars, reasoning that conventional helicopters meant conventional ownership. The case was dismissed in 1986; no branch of government ever acknowledged the craft or its escort.

THE ROAD
The case remains what researchers call the best-documented claim of physical injury from a UFO encounter: medical records, consistent testimony, no conclusive explanation. The road itself is unremarkable — a stretch of FM 1485 through Sam Houston National Forest country. What happened there is filed as an event rather than an entity, the archive's distinction between what a road saw and what a road is.

FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified
· [Media reported] ufo activity: Three witnesses described a diamond-shaped craft with helicopter escort; injuries were documented by physicians. Witnesses name it Cash–Landrum object; the name travels further than the proof. Every road has its ghost story; Cash–Landrum incident site in Dayton, Texas is the one the file actually recorded. The press reported it; the reporting is documented, the phenomenon isn't. The account appears in 'Cash–Landrum incident'. The sky above the site keeps its own file, and this is the entry that made it famous.
  source: Cash–Landrum incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash%E2%80%93Landrum_incident)

HISTORY — 1 documented facts
· [1980-12-29] The December 29, 1980 encounter produced documented injuries and a lawsuit against the government. The documented date is 1980-12-29. The corridor's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The detail is preserved in 'Cash–Landrum incident'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.

SOURCES — 1 cited
· Cash–Landrum incident — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash%E2%80%93Landrum_incident

—
HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not.
Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/