I have seen UFOs twice in my life, but I have thought in both cases that there must be a terrestrial explanation unknown to me. They were certainly “unidentified”, at least by me, but I didn’t conclude that they must be piloted by creatures from another world.
What’s your experience? What’s your conclusion, if any?
Kind of unrelated, but last summer when looking out my window into the night sky past 1am, if I was patient enough I could see what looked like someone turning a light on and off for a split second. It looked like a Star switching on and off like a lightbulb. It was at such a high angle I had no clue as to what it could be. And it didn’t move around either.
The closest thing to any sort of paranormal sight I’ve experienced is when I was waiting at a bus stop one evening when I by chance looked over towards the horizon and saw a bright light slowly moving down. It lasted for a second or so and suddenly extinguished. Fortunately, a few days earlier I had read about Iridium flares, so instead of saying “Wha…??” I said “Cool!”
One time, driving down a deserted, winding road late at night, I went around a curve, and all of a sudden I saw a GIANT GLOWING BULBOUS UFO AT MY THREE O’CLOCK!
It turned out to be a big water tower which they lit up at night. Who lights up a water tower? Sheesh.
Teelo: probably an Iridium flare or something similar: a satellite spins just so and its solar panels reflect sunlight downward.
I’ve seen some things that had me stumped – “stars” (that is, points of light) zipping around, much like meteors, but changing directions. It happened several times over several months, and other people saw 'em too.
I had a really weird sighting once when I was in the middle of the country- in an uber-rural, truly middle-of-nowhere place.
It looked and moved almost like a shooting star - that quick motion - but was much lower in the atmosphere, and seemed to be at about the height of a commercial plane.
The initial movement was what caught my eye- a quick zip across the sky like a shooting star. But then it came to a dead stop, then moved/hovered slowly for about 30 seconds before suddenly taking off in the opposite direction at a quick clip. Zip! - it was gone.
It was a very, very interesting experience.
My first “sighting” goes back to the 1950’s. I had an early morning paper route in San Gabriel, California. I was about 14, with an over-protective mother. I had a cold, so she insisted on taking me on my route in the car. We both saw what looked like a fireball shoot across the sky at what seemed to be nearly treetop level. It looked like the glowing end of a highway flare, with chunks flying off behind like molten sulpher. There was no noise at all. It disappeared after only a couple of seconds. The next day, we checked the paper to see if there had been a rocket launch from Vandenberg AFB, or maybe a meteor shower, but we found no mention of it.
Then in about 1987 I was heading for El Paso, Texas on a vacation trip. I noticed at some distance a white object just hanging in the sky. Its size was hard to guess, as it could have been anywhere from a couple of miles to several miles away across the desert. I couldn’t make out a clear shape. Whatever it was, it shone with a metallic glint. And it didn’t move. It just hung there. A UFO? Well, maybe.
My attention was diverted by a train moving west on the north side of the highway. Not an ordinary train, but the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus train moving toward an engagement somewhere. By the time I stopped gawking at the train and looked back to the other side of the highway, my “flying saucer” was gone.
In both cases the objects were flying, and unidentified (at least by me), but I feel sure they were both earthly phenomena.
Well, not exactly. I live near a balloon port, and I was picking up movies at Blockbuster. My husband was waiting in the car, and as I come out, he’s calling me over to the side of the building.
A small crowd is gathering, all looking up to the sky. There was a balloon with the basket on the top of the balloon rather than suspended from the bottom. How they did that I’ll never know. One of the women in the crowd was talking to her son. She was from “someplace else” and had a thick accent. She told her son, “I don’t TINK it’s an OOF-O.” 
We still get a chuckle out of that.
Yes. No.
I was about 13, and I was on the field at school. There was a thin overcast, which was typical of San Diego at that time of year. NAS Miramar was not far away. When I looked in the sky, I saw a bright ellipse that hung motionless. It was very bright, and its light easily cut through the clouds. I knew it wasn’t a Naval aircfraft. I thought it might be the Goodyear blimp. It wasn’t the sun.
My conclusion was that it was:
A) The blimp, of of which the sun was reflecting at just the right angle; or
B) An atmospheric phenomenon wherein the moisture in the air and the angle of the sun resulted in conditions that would cause a “hot spot” viewable from my position; or
C) A reflection off of a weather balloon or very high flying aircraft.
I saw something perhaps 17 or 18 years ago in North Carolina. I was out late one night at Ft. Bragg on a bivouac and high in the sky I noticed something kind of… floating there. It was linear; about the size of a quarter of a match stick held at arms length. There were some odd wispy sort of flames apparently coming off the back of it. I must’ve watched it for at least 15 minutes as it just kind of hung there. After I concluded that I wasn’t losing my mind totally, I walked over and pointed it out to another unit member and asked him if he saw it. He did. We watched it for another 15 minutes before I decided to go to bed. It never really moved, just seemed to hang there. I have no idea to this day what it was, but suspect it was some sort of space junk skipping off the atmosphere and burning up. Pretty cool even if it wasn’t an alien invasion.
I saw something I’d call a UFO once. It was a bright orange point of light that moved erratically through the sky in a way no aircraft could and for much too long to have been a meteor or anything of that sort. It occasionally appeared to change color and turn off/on, and once even appeared to wink out of existence in one spot and immediately reappear in another a short distance away. It was very strange and I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that it was extraterrestrial, either. Some of the stranger things I saw this object do could have been illusions caused by the clouds it was moving through. I’m not sure what I saw that night, but it sure was strange.
There’s simply no combination of words I can use that would do justice to the joke in my head.
Let’s just say it involves anal probing and deflate anyone else that might be thinking of the same gag.
Yeah it was probably the flare thing.
BTW, i’ve seen the stars zipping around thing too. From the distance my friends and I were at it didn’t move far, only wiggled back and forth a few times. Very unusual…
Yes, and yes.
I think what I saw was a meteor (which is by definition extraterrestrial). But it was a big honkin’ meteor! I’m talking a cratered, brown chunk of rock with a flaming tail behind it! The kind of thing that you’d expect to have enough power to cause a mass extinction.
My Pastor is a terribly level-headed chap and is consequently more than slightly pissed off that he can’t explain his UFO sighting. He and his wife were driving along a road when a light did some unlikely aerobatics, flew over and just hung over the road, then zapped off very fast in one direction. Neither of them could work out what it was and he’ll still grudgingly admit that he sort of thinks it might have been a spaceship. I’d have expected him to plump for an angel myself, although I don’t know why an angel would want to faff about like that any more than a spaceship would.
However, imho there’s no point taking the investigations any further, simply because despite the as-yet unidentified nature of said object, the road they were driving down was very near to Glasgow Airport. I still have no idea what the object was, but the proximity of an airport makes me think it must surely be a manmade thing. That and the nonexistence of extraterrestrial craft visiting earth.
When I was about 10, we - my brother, myself and a friend - were in the backyard on a summer night. We all saw a moving point of light ‘in the stars’. It was about the size of a star and moving in a straight line. At first we thought it was Skylab. But then the moving point of light stopped and about a minute later a small point left it and went to another point of light. There was no other movement.
I have no idea on that one.
About 12 years ago I was in New York’s Catskill Mountains at night, and saw an object in the sky with a greenish glow. I watched it move across the sky for about 5 seconds, and then it shot straight up and disappeared.
10 years ago I was sitting on top of Mount Agimenticus in Maine, at night, and the sky was crystal clear. More stars than I’d ever seen before. Waaaaaaay up there, seemingly among the stars, I watched an object move around and change directions several times, stop, and then zip off to the right and disappear. I was with several people, and there were other groups of people in the immediate area. Most of us saw the same thing.
I have no idea what these objects were, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they were indeed UFOs. Considering that our planet, on a galactic scale, is less significant than a speck of dust in Asia, why would we be the only ones in existance?