When I was about 10, I was watching a lunar eclipse with my dad, and I had the telescope out. My dad went to go to the bathroom. While he was there, I saw this disk-shaped object with four flashing blue lights zip by the sky. Planes don’t use blue lights to the best of my knowledge, and it was too low to be a satellite. I still wonder what that thing was.
Have you ever seen a UFO?
When I was about 11 or 12 I was on the playing field of my jr. high. There was a thin overcast. When I looked up I saw a bright white ellipse in the sky. I knew it was not an F-14 from NAS Miramar because it did not appear to be moving. It did not appear to be any flying thing I was familiar with (and even as a very young child I made a habit of identifying different aircraft). I never did find out what it was.
I’m guessing it was either A) some sort of atmospheric reflection caused by the juxtaposition of the sun and the thin overcast, or B) a blimp or large balloon that was reflecting the sun “just right”. Or it could have been an alien spacecraft (although I don’t believe they exist – more’s the pity).
When I was about twelve I saw some weird spot in the sky that was going left and right, down and then finally left upwards. I wrote to SETI in New Mexico about it and they sent me a large package about the different kinds of UFO/alien encounters. I was excited about getting a package from such an official place, as I rarely got mail. I never sent them back anything 'cause I didn’t remember details based on what they wanted in their survey.
I’ve seen plenty of flying objects I could not identify. It has never occurred to me that any of them were alien spacecraft, however.
Barry
Okay. Some years ago I was riding my bike home from the bookstore after dark. I happened to glance upward and nearly went off the road; a simply enormous boomerang-shaped craft had appeared over the treeline and was cruising slowly over the neighborhood. After the initial shock, I immediately started to pursue the thing, which was fairly easy because it was traveling in the same direction as the road ran. I estimated it to be at least 100 yards across, although it was impossible to tell just how high up it was. The craft was illuminated by a series of white lights spaced equidistantly along its “wings,” and I thought I could make out bits of the hull between the lights. The eerie thing was that the huge vehicle was perfectly silent, except for a very faint whirr and a strange intermittent sound that sounded almost like distant beeping or…quacking?
Yes, I had been chasing a flock of ducks. The light reflected on their bodies from nearby streetlights gave the image of an illuminated V formation, and my overheated brain connected the dots to interpret the sight as a single moving object. The faint hint of superstructure between the “lights” was pure hallucination. So that’s my big UFO story, although it only remained “U” for about 2 minutes. But it was an interesting experience; I’d never believed in UFOs as alien craft, but the sight of that huge vessel definitely caused my sense of reality to wobble a bit for a few seconds. If that formation had passed out of sight before I’d heard the quacking, I honestly don’t know what I’d think today. Thank you, friendly ducks.
Some time later, I was perusing a book on UFOs and happened on a breathless account of the mysterious, huge silent boomerang craft that are sometimes spotted. They even had an illustration of the enormous vehicle hovering over a street, which prompted a rueful smile from me. There but for the grace of God…
Oh, and one time I was up at my uncle’s hunting cabin in western PA and was lying on the grass outside stargazing–so many stars away from city lights!–and this glowing fried egg thing went right across the sky within a few seconds. No idea if it was a meteor, but I suspect that I was dozing off and dreamed it instead.
Sure. Seen lots of 'em, and I have photos to prove it.
I went to middle school in Brewster, NY and moved from there at the start of the Hudson Valley Sightings. Yes, I did see something that I was unable to indentiy but I doubt it was related to the hoax. All I saw were three very bright white lights, each of the three were at an apex forming an equilateral triangle.
I’ve also seen what appeared to be a spherical object in the night sky over southern Illinois. It may have been just a planet reflecting the sun’s light but the object was to the north and brighter on top. Seems to me that if it was reflecting the sun, it would have been brightest on the left.
I saw something I was unable, at first, to identify. A series of lights moving through the sky over my city in very random patterns, twisting and turning. Freaked me the hell out.
After about 2 years I realised it was those spotlights that they use outside events (like the bat-signal, you know). I had never encountered them before, and couldn’t for the life of me work out what it was.
I’m a UFO buff (not to be confused with “UFO-cult lunatic who believes aliens are invading”), and I have seen several things that remain unexplained as far as I’m concerned. Here is a National UFO Reporting Center report that I submitted about ten minutes after a sighting in 1998:
http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/004/S04229.html
Also, if you click my homepage link at the bottom of this post, you can see still shots from a video I took in 1996. The UFO’s appearance is rather uninteresting. It basically looks like a balloon in stills; its movement is the intriguing part. One day I’ll get the whole video uploaded somewhere. But if anyone can identify the “chase plane” also shown in the stills, I’d love to know what it is.
Oh, and Musicat: :rolleyes:
-Andrew L