Thanks for your interest.
At the moment I’m short on sleep. I’ll lay it out tomorrow or Monday, though I’m sure many will ridicule me, as my experience was VERY unusual … making it even harder to take seriously, though I know from where I speak.
Yes.
About 10 years ago, I was at a boarding school in the middle of nowhere. We were out at night with a telescope looking at the Hale-Bopp comet. Since the school was in the middle of an incredibly rural area, we were able to clearly see the sky.
A single light that looked to be at about the height of a standard jet streaked across the sky at an incredible speed - the closest thing I could compare it to is a shooting star. But here’s where it gets weird - it stopped almost instantly and hung in the air, then shot off at a 90-degree angle across the sky almost as far as we could see. It stopped again, hung there for a moment, and then shot off at an equally high speed and out of our field of vision.
I have no idea what it could have been.
That’s a fairly common one, the thing that moves at bugger-all speed and does an impossible right angle turn in defiance of all reasonable laws of momentum, etc. Not what I saw, but have heard a whole bunch almost identical.
Only one answer: whatever it was, it wasn’t. Which, of course, is no answer at all.
Here’s one I am willing to share -
My gas station was situated right on the border of an upper-middle class neighborhood, which led to me being chronically short handed. With relief I reviewed the resume of an older gentleman who appeared to be looking for part time work to fund his hobbies. Perfect, I thought - this guy isn’t going to take off to college or be interested in a better paying job, so I hired him.
After training was complete and he was starting to get settled in, he took me aside and mentioned that he was the president of a local UFO society and that, while it usually doesn’t interfere with work, he sometimes received telepathic communication from the aliens and he kind of blanked out when this was happening. Not to worry, he said, they’re friendly!
Never happened while he was working for me, but (since it was a franchise type arrangement) another station on down the road had an employee that wanted to work in my store and UFO guy actually lived closer to her store, so we swapped employees. She told me later that occasionally he’d just freeze for a half-minute or so, then go back to what he was doing. Really not often enough to interfere with his work, and considering the crazy Turk I had working for me (who’d scream at customers if they got on his bad side), communication with aliens wasn’t even grounds for an unofficial reprimand.
Do you know what night it was? Where were you? Where was it in the sky? I saw the same thing while looking at Hale-Bopp that year.
Once I thought I saw the Virgin Mary floating before me, but it turned out to be an eye-booger.
Thank you for sharing.
Yup, that’s the real hallmark. I saw a shooting star stop dead and leisurely reverse directions. And ya’ll know, that ain’t right.
After all these years, Mr Cotta still doesn’t believe I know what I saw. Go figure. :dubious:
I was about 13 years old. A friend and I walked out my front door at about 11 or 12 pm. A huge light whooshed down the street at about 2 or 3 times the height of our house. It made only a whoosh no motor noise at all. It was bright and was fast. I couldn’t call my mom and say look at this .It was gone. We looked at each other and said no one is going to believe this. I don’t remember if we ever told anybody.
- They opened for Rush at Winterland.
Your story about the cat has me wondering whether you’re being facetious here, but it was probably a satellite. They look much like stars from here and move very much in the way you describe.
Not to badger you guys too much, but I personally would really like to hear your experiences. This thread’s vibe reminds me of Very Vaguely Creepy. (I think the original was lost during the Great Purge…or something)
Yeah, I was a lurker from 1999 or so until my signup. I remember some old 'uns.
One time, late on a very foggy night in upstate New York, I was driving along a lonely back road in an unfamiliar town. I came around a turn and a bright, silvery white orb floated up atop the trees and followed my car for two miles.
Turns out it was a water tower.
Man, I really don’t. It was in rural Virginia, sometime in late '96 or early '97 (when was Hale-Bopp around?), and we were just looking at whatever part of the sky Hale-Bopp was in. I have no clue what weeknight it was.
I don’t mind sharing.
I was about 16, In Illinois. My friend Scott had rich parents and we were spending the night on their yacht. Out in the back of the yacht and looking up at the sky, Scott, Gary and I were just talking when we saw three really bright stars above us. No big deal - we were Illinois kids and used to seeing bright skies with stars. Still, it was kind of odd to see three bright stars together and we mentioned it. We watched those three bright stars for about ten minutes while we were just talking about stuff that 16 year-olds talk about.
Suddenly - one of the bright stars took a fast dive to the right, the other to the left and the other moved very slowly in another direction!
We all three were freaked out!
Not a UFO but an IFO…
Was driving to Edmonton through remote forest with three friends one dark winter night and we saw a huge red fireball, complete with tail, streak across the sky. A meteor, I assume.
It was HUGE. The “ball” part was perhaps half the size of the moon (to the eye, obviously) and the flaming tail spanned maybe half the length from zenith to the horizon. It wasn’t just a point of light or a line. It had character: spheroid, flames and colour patterns, etc… It was totally amazing. It lasted about 5 to 10 seconds and disappeared over the horizon or hit the earth, I don’t know.
When I was 9 or 10, my stepmother was driving me home. We were, in cliche fashion, going down a dark road through a lot of farmland. Out of nowhere she stopped the truck and uttered a “holy shit!” I looked to my right and saw a large, dark/black object hovering over a small lake/pond. While discussing it afterwards, my stepmother thought it was triangular, but I thought it had a vague spade shape to it. It had a red light in the center and two smaller white lights behind that one (or perhaps the colors were reversed), forming a triangle. It wasn’t moving, and it made no sound. We watched it for a few moments before she got freaked out and sped off.
This was 11-12 years ago, and when I mentioned it to her a few months ago, she had absolutely no memory of the incident.
I’d LOVE it if someone could tell me what it was (I ain’t buyin swamp gas :)) as thinking about it still gives me the willies.
Case in point - - I’ve only seen 2001 once (has anyone bothered to watch it more than once?), after I got my wisdom teeth taken out when I was 16. It gave me an INTENSELY creepy feeling that felt related to this incident. It’s hard to explain, but I remember looking out the window and suddenly felt ‘recovered’ extra memories of the incident where… more happened. I’m not sure what, but I distinctly felt that there was more to the story. It was most likely just the percocet, but I refuse the watch the movie ever again (for boredom and creep factor reasons). Thinking about THAT gives me the chills as well.
Everyone’s refusal to post their experiences makes me kind of wonder if they’re going to come after me for posting this…
I was a kid in the early 70s. Wisconsin location. Early morning, heay snow, with a very strong wind. We were waiting for the schoolbus, when we saw a silvery, roughly balled-shaped object, soaring over the crest of a hill, about 2/3 mile away. Near the Waukesha County Airport.
We all thought it a UFO.
As corny as it sounds, it was a weather balloon. But some of the kids insisted it was a UFO, even years later. The mundane reality was forgotten.
Damn you all. I spent twenty entire minutes staring into the night sky over Area 51 from Rachel, Nevada, and - nada. I feel conned.
ETA: I did hear a shooting star once though. It went “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsh”.
I don’t have any personal experiences to share, but my husband’s uncle was one of the engineers on the original space shuttle. He assures us that these things are out there, but he can’t or won’t elaborate.
I never have, but several people I know whose opinion I respect have seen some weird shit in the sky.
UFO enthusiasts might be interested in this recent and well-documented sighting near the Channel Islands, that happened this month over the English Channel, off the coast of France. A “very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area” was reported to ATC simultaneously by two pilots, working for separate airlines, from opposite sides of the same ‘object’, with similar estimates of size and altitude (“a mile long”).
Whatever it was, bleepy green men or weather phenomenon, it’s a fascinating thing to have happened.