The next time you're in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas get out your binoculars and check out the bullet dents and holes in the flagpole ball on top of the venerable First National Building at 8th & Indiana. The cops will tell you that fellow officers used the ball for target practice during boring night shifts back in the "old" days. Shots were indeed fired, but it was hardly target practice on that terrible night! 

It was 1962, and Officer Chet "Chalk Fairy" Chester was on routine patrol in downtown Wichita Falls. Chester had earned the nickname "Chalk Fairy" after it was discovered that it was he who had been contaminating crime scenes by drawing chalk outlines around deceased persons. The name is still used by police departments and crime writers around the nation today, thanks to Wichita Falls own Officer Chet Chester.

It was the night shift, and things had been relatively quiet in the Falls. Chester was parked near the old train depot, enjoying a donut. He would have gone to Winchell's or Dunkin Donuts but, in 1962, there were no such establishments in Wichita Falls.

Suddenly, without warning, a blinding beam of light descended on a parked car just 50 feet in front of Chester's patrol car. The car exploded in a ball of fire, sending flaming metal in all directions. The sound was deafening and it caught Chester in mid-bite of a cream-filled "long john", splattering raspberry goop onto the windshield.

Chester hesitated… trying to decide if he had time to swallow what donut he had managed to bite off. After a long few seconds, he spit out the donut remnants, and grabbed his radio microphone to report the incident. Before he could press the push-to-talk button, another beam of light struck the 12-story one-room wide skyscraper near 7th and Ohio streets. The beam hit near the fifth floor and the building exploded, showering bricks, furniture and office supplies over the whole eastern downtown area.

By this time there was no need to make the radio call. The entire police station, located just a block away at 9th & Ohio, had emptied, with officers fanning out to see what the commotion was about. No sooner than the station was clear, a third beam hit the old Police HQ. Another shower of bricks, mortar, desks, donuts, dominoes, chalk, ticket books, comic books, magazines and other assorted debris showered the downtown area.

Before the last domino landed, yet another blast of light sizzled another parked car, creating another mini auto junkyard in seconds. There was little doubt in anyone's mind that downtown Wichita Falls was under attack by something from outer space, since not even the Russians could be capable of such destruction.

They were right. Atop the flagpole, which was atop the old First National Building at 8th & Indiana was, according "Chalk Fairy" Chester, the most hideous looking creature ever seen by man, at least in Wichita Falls, at least on 8th Street anyway. The destructive light beams appeared to be coming from its eyes.

Immediately, every cop within two blocks drew a bead on the ball and opened fire. After about a hundred rounds were fired, the creature dropped to the roof of the building. By the time officers, with the aid of Fire Department ladders, reached the roof, the creature was nowhere to be found.

There was practically nothing left of old police station. It was bulldozed and a small city park, named after the Police Chief at that time, was developed on that spot. A new station was erected at 7th & Holliday in 1965. During the three years before the new station was ready, officers worked out of tents scattered about the city.