Clint Walker - rugged star of TV's long-running "Cheyenne" - says that he saw one with his own eyes.

The actor recalled: "I was 21 or 22 at the time. I'd been hunting squirrels along the Mississippi River in Illinois."

"I was on my way home - driving on a deserted road - when I saw it. It looked like it was made of stainless steel or aluminum. It was like a long, slender cigar, fat in the middle, pointed at both ends."

"I was so fascinated that I almost ran the car into the river. So I stopped, got out and watched for about a minute."

"It was going quite slowly - about 30 or 40 miles an hour. It passed over the road where I was standing and headed for some tall bluffs. At its altitude, it would have hit the bluffs."

"But it stopped, hovered a few seconds, tilted at about a 45-degree angle and then flew backward 10 or 15 feet. Then it shot forward at a tremendous rate of speed. It accelerated at such a speed that it vanished."

Asked if he's certain what he saw was a UFO, Walker said: "It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when I saw it. It was fall and there was no wind and no clouds - it was very still. It wasn't cold and it was't warm."

"The sun was still out, so there was no mistaking it for anything else. I saw it very clearly. It wasn't a hallucination of any kind - it was there."

Walker said he was amazed at what he saw, but not afraid.

"I was surprised and tremendously curious - but I had no fear at all," he said.