Joanne Sharp told the 911 operator that ball lightning emerged from her chimney, followed her down the hallway, into the kitchen, and hovered above her stove.
"It looked to have been thinking," she told the Sheriff's Deputy. "About what is anybody's guess."
The Deputy nodded and wrote down her statement. There'd been a number of sightings in the county that summer and he made it his business to get to the bottom of every last one.
"All I could do was hold onto the refrigerator door handle with my angel food cake batter sittin' there all by its lonesome over by the counter. I swear to you I got the distinct feeling that ball lightning looked to be fixin' on incinerating it. It's intentions were not honorable."
Static electricity made Joanne's hair stand straight up just before the ball lightning skidded off her red checked table cloth and entered the pantry where she said it evaporated into nothing above a stack of creamed corn cans.
The deputy did detect the characteristic odor of ozone found at all the other houses and wrote that down.
"Now I'm going to ask you this, Mrs. Sharp, and I'd like you to answer me as honestly as you can: Since ball lightning visited with you in your home, have you had any communication with. . .well, for lack of a better term, the mother ship or A mother ship?"