Pat Eudy had always considered himself a practical man. He made his living as a car salesman, meeting people daily, working in a field that relied on trust and reliability. He was not the kind of person who entertained wild ideas or sought attention for things he could not prove. But for more than two years, he struggled with an experience he could not explain.

The events of that night in March 1979 remained a mystery to him. A three-hour gap in his memory refused to fade, no matter how much time passed. He had not been drinking heavily. He had not suffered from any medical condition that could explain what happened. Yet, from the moment he saw that light in the sky, everything went blank.

Eudy had spent the evening visiting a friend in Locust. He drank two beers while they talked, nothing that would impair his ability to drive home. At three in the morning, he got into his car and set off along familiar roads toward his house, which he shared with his mother on U.S. 601 South.

The roads were quiet at that hour. The only movement came from the occasional breeze shaking the branches of trees. The stars were bright against the darkness, and the cold night air crept in through the edges of the car windows. Eudy had always been the kind of man who watched the sky. He often glanced upward, appreciating the vastness above him, but that night, something stood out.

A bright light hovered in the sky, far larger and more intense than any star. It was not moving, not blinking like the lights of an aircraft. It held its place in the sky, glowing with an intensity that made his skin crawl. He kept his eyes on it for as long as he could, trying to understand what he was looking at.

Then, without warning, he lost time.

The next thing he knew, he was somewhere else. He was still driving, still gripping the wheel, but now he was eight miles away. The bridge over the Rocky River was gone. The bright light was gone. He found himself driving south on Morgan Mill Road near G.B. Helms’ store, confused and uneasy.

Three hours had passed. The time on the dashboard confirmed it. He could not recall anything that had happened between the moment he saw the light and the moment he found himself on this road.

By the time he reached home at 6:20 a.m., his body felt strange. His eyes burned, as if he had been exposed to something harsh and irritating. His skin tingled with a sensation that was both stinging and itching, concentrated around his fingers and ankles. He had no injuries, no visible signs of anything wrong, yet the discomfort was real. He chose not to see a doctor, instead treating the symptoms with rubbing alcohol and lotion. Over the next few days, the burning faded, but the memory loss stayed with him.

For more than two years, Eudy tried to ignore what had happened. He kept working, kept focusing on normal life, but he could not shake the feeling that something had been taken from him. The three hours he lost were not a simple blackout. They were not a trick of exhaustion or stress. Something had happened in that time, and no matter how hard he tried, his mind would not give him the answers.

Finally, after years of silence, he decided to seek help. He reached out to a civilian UFO research center in Ohio, hoping someone might have insight into what he had experienced. The center connected him with Henry Morton, a UFO investigator based in Wadesboro, North Carolina.