The date was a year ago, July 26, 2025. I was in my back lawn when I glanced up to the sky and see what appeared to be a huge flock of snow geese over Riverside Cemetery. I looked back up because something didn’t seem right. I’ve never seen a flock of snow geese attempting to land at the cemetery, just Canadians. These weren’t snow geese at all. Whatever I was looking at was very high up and just hovering above and geese didn’t hover.

There was a group of what appeared to be over 200 white drones in the sky hovering very high over the cemetery. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The sun was reflecting off them. It was a surreal feeling to say the least. Like a Twilight Zone moment. So, I started taking pictures. Then they started slowly moving south.

I was thinking, where did they come from? Who is behind this? What was the purpose of so many? Were they collecting information? If so, what? Was this from a Tech company scoping out Marshalltown for a Data Center? And then something else caught my attention. One single drone was far, far, higher up than the rest of them and was stationary. Was it the mother drone controlling the others? The swarm of drones moved south very slowly and appeared to move towards the courthouse area and that’s when I lost sight of them from my neighborhood.

I immediately called city councilor Gary Thompson to ask if he knew anything about them and sent pictures. I figured he might know who got a permit for this or who owned all these drones and what they were doing. Certainly, someone had to have acquired a local permit to fly these many drones over a populated area.

Later, Mr. Thompson and I talked again. What he told me was shocking. He told me no city official, or the police chief knew anything. One person on Facebook said that they saw over 100 drones the same day. And now, nearly a year later, councilor Thompson still said no one knew anything about them. It appears all city officials were oblivious to this. It takes a large area to stage these many drones and it’s just amazing this could take place without the city’s knowledge. Someone must know all the answers and it happened on the previous mayor’s watch.