12 January 1979: the figure in the light

12 January 1979, from about 6:30 a.m.

The report: The most unusual Fort Wayne account in the compilations is a named witness's, given to the newspaper at the time and retold in Dennett's 2024 compilation. Sally Collet (the surname also appears as Colette in retellings) said she woke early on 12 January 1979, unable to sleep, and saw from her home a bright, sparkling object — "something real bright in the center like a star only brighter… kind of gold colored… sparkling like a fireworks, things shooting out all around it" — in which, once, the upper half of a human figure appeared, moving slowly back and forth as if walking. She watched until after sunrise. At about 7:00 a.m. she telephoned the police; the desk sergeant quoted in the account, whose name the retelling renders as Willie Weir, sent an officer who saw nothing — but the desk then took a second call from another woman describing, in the sergeant's words, "the exact same thing to me, about the shadow of a man passing in front of this object that was kind of sparkling — that made me wonder." A similar sighting about a week earlier was also mentioned in the inquiries the account describes. Collet's own summary, as quoted, is the one this section endorses as method: "I don't pretend to know what it was… that's what I saw." No official investigation or disposition of the report is documented in the sources reached; it stands as a witness account, carried in the local press at the time by the compilation's telling, with a second caller's matching description as its only corroboration.

Sources:

1. Preston Dennett, "UFOs in Your Hometown," episode four (20 September 2024), Fort Wayne segment — the Collet account, the police desk exchange and the second caller, all as retold from the contemporary newspaper account.