Cigar-shaped craft, 8 feet long with flashing liglhts, hovering above ground

In 1955, when my father was 18 years old, he and two of his siblings came across a UFO while walking home from a movie theater at night.  The craft was cigar-shaped, about 8 feet long, with flashing lights.  It was hovering about two feet above the ground, behind some small businesses in a little logging town in Arkansas.
 As soon as they came across it, they did a U-turn and never looked back.
 My father told me about this when I was a teenager, and never talked about it again.   He was a very quiet, conservative, religious person.  At the time of the sighting he was in the Navy and home on leave.  His siblings were a little younger than him.
Date may be approximate, although the witness does not indicate that fact.  PD