I stepped outside at 9:38 PM Thursday night to have a small cigar, and saw a UFO.
I should make my position clear: I’ve always believed in the possibility of UFOs, but I’ve never believed in anyone who believed in UFOs. I’ve never seen anything that constituted anything close to proof, and never been dissuaded that there isn’t something out there. On the other hand, you can hem and haw and qualify all you like – in the end you know where you stand. If someone showed up tomorrow and shouted ATHEISTS, TO THE LEFT! DEISTS AND ABOVE, TO THE RIGHT! you know where you’d go. (If he had a gun, or a court order, that is.) Likewise the question of life on other planets. I don’t think we’re alone, but it’s one of those items you file under Unknowable Things That Are Irrelevant Until They’re Not.
Life elsewhere is one issue; life that gets off the rock and goes elsewhere is another. One of the snarky objections that annoys me: Why would they care about us? Lowly smelly violent apes. I don’t know. Maybe they never knew they had the capacity to appreciate beauty until they got out of their neighborhood, and once they saw what other rocks were up to, well, they were changed. Earth would be crack to these guys. Music. So much music, pouring out of this green globe without effort. They couldn’t stay away.
There’s not an argument against it that doesn’t sound like hubris; there’s not an argument for it that doesn’t sound like wishful thinking.
Anyway: All my life I’ve wanted to see an unexplained light in the sky. I would have preferred the classic hovering cigar-shape moving at a slow rate of speed before it zipped off in another direction, but you can’t have everything. For that matter I’d prefer the “Close Encounters” mothership appearing behind the water tower, because that would certainly give us all something to talk about besides the economy. Then again, probably not; “Giant spacecraft lands, releases abductees; state weighs $1.2 million emergency bill for housing, retraining.”
SHUTUP you say. WHAT DID YOU SEE? Well, I’m used to lights overhead, because we’re under the approach to the airport. One by one, day after day, the great planes descend over Jasperwood. I’m used to private planes, low-slow cargo planes, hella loud transports. The sky is always busy.
This was a bright point of light, fairly low in the sky, and it moved from east to west in a straight line – it jiggled up and down a bit, but it was east to west, not angled. It drew a white line, took less than a second to travel halfway across the sky, and vanished.
I thought: wow.
I blinked and thought again: wow.
So what was it? Meteorite? Again, straight line across, not angled down. Plane? Too fast – unless it was very close, like two blocks away, and turned its lights on and off. But I would have heard it; I hear the planes sometimes before I see them. I just don’t know. If I saw it on YouTube I wouldn’t believe it; I’d think someone had waved a penlight flash, nothing more. The telltale jiggles show it was the work of a human hand. (The Telltale Jiggles are playing at First Avenue this weekend, by the way.)
But it wasn’t that. I know what I saw, and I know where I saw it. Up there. Impossibly fast. Here, then there, then gone. I’d say meteor, no prob, but it was parallel to the earth, and that’s one hell of an approach angle. I suppose the jiggle could be explained by atmospheric light scattering, and yes, I just sort of made that up.
What an unfulfilling experience. No answers, nothing conclusive – just a tantalizing moment that doesn’t plug into anything you know, but winks at things you suspect. I keep looking outside, knowing I won’t see it, but wishing I could. I suppose it’s like hearing a strange chord out of nowhere – silence is never quite the same again for a long time.
And I was worried about what I’d write for my Sunday column.
Today: 100 mysteries, and a pizza-centric entry in Friday Fargo / Google Street views. Early meetings and other botherations will interfere with buzz.mn, but I’m just following my employer’s priorities. See you soon, here or there.
Ever seen one yourself? As if I have to prime the comment-pump. 
And I cannot resist this.
Pass it along, if you wish
160 Responses to Friday, Feb. 06: Alert Shado
Host with the Most
I wonder if what you saw was an “alien rod” as profiled on History Channel’s MonsterQuest. Hate to be a spoiler, but not really alien at all!
P.S. I want to Dalwhinnie
HEY, IT WAS THE SPACE STATION……………GET A LIFE!
In May 1998 I was walking with a friend on the beach on Jekyll Island, GA. It was night with an overcast sky. We were walking southward on the beach at the south end of the island. Out of nowhere, at about a 45 degree angle in the sky, probably about 15 degrees out from the shoreline, there appeared a bright, light, sort of amber colored, similar to a mercury lamp in color. It was streaking downward at the 45 degree angle. At first I thought it was a bright meteor. However, there was no tail trailing behind the light. After a couple of seconds it split into 2 equally sized lights of the same color. I still thought it might be a meteor that had fragmented as I have seen a couple of those in my lifetime, but again, there were no tails behind the lights, they were of equal size and brightness, round in shape. They maintained uniform color and size. When the original light split it was like the second light came out of the first one and the two lights were about the same size as the original light. They were completely silent. I heard no plane or jet noise and it was low enough and close enough that if they were planes or jets I would have heard them. Then the two lights together made a 90 degree turn together in perfect formation and flew low and even out over the ocean. I watched until they disappeared in the distance. All this happened within a minute or so. They were not attached to any craft that I could see as I could see the background of the sky behind the two lights. I was 41 years old at the time and I had never before and I have never since seen anything like it. I am an agnostic when it comes to UFOs, but this was the only sighting of lights in my life that I could not explain. I have always been extremely careful to listen for plane/jet noise when watching lights that I found unusual, and except for this sighting, I have always been able to hear the noise of the plane or jet. I have seen many satellites and meteors in my life and these lights were neither of those things. I don’t know that it was extraterrestial, but I do know that it was unconventional and unlike anything I have ever seen. I will never forget it.
In 1977, While walking down a long lane from my neighbors house, I saw a craft that had two of the brightest white lights on the front of it imaginable. They looked like giant afterburners lit up, but they were on the front of the craft. It moved from East to West, from over the horizon, directly overhead and disappeared over the western horizon in less than 3 seconds. It never made a sound. This was in NW Illinois.
In 1999, one of my best friends, and still a skeptic, told me she saw a black boomerang type UFO outside of Portage, IN. It was moving very slowly, and at both wingtips, there was a static, electric charge eminating moving between the tips. Then a red orb formed in the middle of the electric charges and remained there for about 10 seconds. Suddenly, the red orb and elcetric charges vanished, and a few seconds later so did the triangle craft. She said she doesn’t have a clue what it is, but she doesn’t belive in UFO’s. Huh? I’m a believer, but would like more self-proof.
Thanks! I’m running errands this afternoon, and will see if I can get one of these “life” things you speak of. They sound like they come in handy.
Hell, James. You already have so many lives that you should be trading them in like carbon credits.
Saw something similar Thursday morning at 6:00 AM. Two slow moving flashing objects on a parallel course heading due north (watched them thinking they were planes, but traveling in a direction they don’t usually travel) suddenly both appeared to increase speed and vanished in a flash traveling north. Still don’t know what they were.
So they thought back then that we’d have a moonbase by 1980. What a shame that didn’t come true. What a shame that it hasn’t come true 30 years later. Let’s get back up there!
Hey Mr.LILeks! Watch UFO at FORT BENNING,Ga on YOU-
TUBE. Have you heard the story about 1300 men taken or abducted
by alien combat troops on Sept 2, 1977 ? Maybe not,but be alert
(they) might be the military ? Breaking News-UFO crashed at FORT
BENNING on 11/28/2006, they posted this info on 12/9/2008 ! Talk
about control info leaking out the public. Type DISCLOSE.TV they
took a photo this craft or object ! Email back or contact me at
john_t_vasquez@yahoo.com.
I was around 19 and traveling back from a late afternoon of swimming at a rock quarry. I was with my brother’s girlfriend and she was driving her parent’s brand new Pontiac Bonneville. This was on a long stretch of flat terrain with just a few trees in northeastern Nebraska. It is a very low-population area. A person can travel for some time and not see another person.
I was looking out the car window and a large silver disk was tracking us. It was so quiet–it made no sound at all–that I don’t know how long it had been tracking us before I noticed it. It was very close–between 50-80 feet over us but to the right of the vehicle. I said nothing to my friend because I was afraid she would pull the car to a stop and the disk would disappear. I wanted to watch it awhile longer.
The disk continued to track us and this went on for what seemed like a long time–probably around 20 minutes or so. All the time I was watching. At various times I could see pinkish lights and I also saw what looked to be port holes or some type of window. I could not see any being in the disk.
Finally I said something and sure enough–my friend quickly pulled the car to the side of the road and we jumped out. The disk disappeared so fast that it appeared to literally sink into the ground.
I would say it was about 25-30 feet across and it was maybe 10-12 feet in depth at the center. It was controlled by some form of intelligence as it tracked us down the road and then reacted when we stopped.
I would also just like to say that I respect Mr. Lilek’s interpretation of what he saw. I am not going to tell him he saw Venus or a meteor or whatever. He was there; I wasn’t.
I saw something in the 1970′s that defies conventional explanation. If I saw the same thing today, I might suspect it to be an experimental military drone of some kind, but bear in mind that this was in 1974 or 75, and in the middle of nowhere a long way from any military bases or airports that could handle anything bigger than a cessna. Rather than retype the story, you can read about it here:
http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/042/S42594.html
Sorry, did not want to get personal……………what you saw was the space station. Check out nasas space station web page and check out the orbit. I’m sure it will match up with what you observed!
Peace Out
hello my name is clayton miller and i live in sarasota,florida and this past summer me and my friend sean o’mara saw an object very similar to this.it was a friday night during late july or early august and we were at our condo complex pool at around 9:00 p.m and it was dark outside.we saw an object that looked mostly like a bright star that appeared from over trees to the west of our location and fairly high in the sky(not very sure exactly how high but we could see it well)and it did not have any blinking lights like an airplane or helicopter has and it was totally silent.we both agreed it looked like a star because it was a solid light,no blinking lights.it wsnt a shooting star because it wasnt moving fast enough and it was headed in a straight line,west to east.we joked that the object was traveling to the bermuda tri-angle because it was going that direction.we watched it till it went over the horizon from where were at,at the pool.
We bought a very large mylar balloon toy shaped like a flying saucer for our boys when they were young. They could play catch with it indoors, launching it spinning and bouncing off the cathedral ceilings. But then they forgot that it was filled with helium and took it outside….where the wind lifted it slowly, higher and higher, across the ravine and up over the hill across the way….where the setting sun lit it up bright orange….until it flew out of sight. Two days later, there was a small item in the paper that a UFO was sighted in Oak Park, one town due east. This is the first time I ever told anyone.
James — I checked with Phargon, the Grey/Human liaison for the Upper Midwest. He said it wasn’t one of theirs.
WOW, so that’s how you get lots of blog comments, say you saw a UFO. Well, there’s not time enough to skim through the previous comments of my esteemed Internet commenter colleagues, but my vote is that you saw a satellite, maybe even the International Space Station. Some of those suckers move fast, seemingly in a straight line, and can be very bright because it’s still daytime way up there for them… until suddenly their sunlight is eclipsed by earth, at which moment they abruptly disappear.
I am always an alien-visitor skeptic. If I saw something that was absolutely inexplicable per anything know to man, I would still assume it was something man-made or natural that I simply wasn’t comprehending — of all possible explanations space aliens seems to me to be the obvious last choice.
Well, I think you saw a ufo- and as for why they would be
interested in us, how about that we are on the verge of
destroying our planet and possibly affecting our whole
solar system? So, not so much that we have a lot to teach
them but that we are like children playing with fire and
need some watching…
I do have a fantasy that it could be very beneficial for
us to contact a more advanced civilization , that they could help us clean up the huge mess more quickly and
efficiently…
Thanks for sharing…
I have always been a scoffer and still am. But one dark and stormy night I went out in my back yard and saw the real thing: An aircraft with rolling neon lights on its belly, advertising I know not what.
For almost a minute, before I realized what it was, I experienced a fright that could almost be described as religious. It wasn’t in anticipation of anything terrible happening, it was not animal fright but distinctly human, I think. Cave-man human.
Afterwards I realized how happy I am in my faith that we are made in God’s image. And if the universe is infinite, than as far as I’m concerned the earth is at it’s center.
And I just don’t want any strangers around, period.
Yes I’ve seen one too…1966, watched it with a friend for half an hour…didn’t know what they were then but I do now. I hope to never see one again.
at astroprisoner: why would a ufo have aviation lights? do you think external light bulbs could survive entry into our atmosphere? i think you saw a plane, buddy.
at james lilek: i hope it was a really good cigar. i will be listening to you tonight on C2Cam.
what i saw was too low of an altitude to be the space station.unless the space station crashed to earth that night which i highly doubt
Welcome to the “Ive Seen ” club. Most my sightings here in Montana have been like yours, short and sweet. I stopped counting after 40 sightings and they are increasing. 90% of them have been at night. If you too want to see them do a “fly by” all you have to do is look up and watch for few minutes. Again most mine happened within few minutes as though they waiting for chance to show themselves. Dont believe me , Look for yourself long enough you too will join the “Ive Seen ” club. Be Well
It could have been a meteorite, yes they can travel across the sky, I have seen them. It depends on the angle, they can skip off the atmosphere.
About 6 years ago (Aug in Mi) Myself, wife and two kids watched a rectangle green square traverse the sky in about 10 seconds. I thought It might be the ISS but we could see detail which you can’t at 200 miles. It was 1/3 moon diameter and flying in a NON aerodynamic orientation. I thought if it were in the atmosphere it would be ripped apart. No noise, no trails. It looked to be in orbit. The paradox was it was either close (but not closer than cloud tops) and had ability to do 6-10k mph (I did the math using angular velocity) without a sound.
Color – Green, looked to be internally illuminated.
it looked to have solar panels on it too. Again how could i see this detail?
My guess it was in orbit and very large vs in the atmosphere and very close doingg 7-10k.
If in orbit (100+ miles) it would have to be around 1-2 miles in size to see the detail we did.
Still have no idea what the green flying box was.
Satellites and the ISS move at a steady pace, and you’d have a few minutes to watch the ISS pass by from horizon to horizon if it passed over your head. You might have seen a meteor – white light (I once saw a bolide that was multi-colored and totally awesome), straight and lightning fast trajectory, etc. You can sometimes see a faint trail the meteor leaves as it burns, but that disappears quickly.
The ‘get giggy wit it’ movements sounds strange, unless it was some kind of atmospheric distortion making it appear that way. I always tell my friend that when you see an actual UFO in the sky or on the ground, you won’t have any doubts and you might have to change your shorts. Whatever it was that you saw, it made you contemplate the ‘what if.’ Cool.
Imagine if you had seen something even more convincing. You’d still be given no quarter by public opinion.
A jetliner crashed into the Hudson river between Manhattan and New Jersey. Possibly the most public camera-laden view in the world. After a very slow glide over the George Washington Bridge, we have some very grainy video of a cigar shaped object splashing into the river.
If a documented flight with ticketed passengers were not involved and in constant contact with ATC, I’m sure the whole incident could be dismissed as collective hysteria and delusion. Or perhaps the work hoaxers. Frankly the whole scenario sounds made up. If that would have really happened, don’t you think we would have some really good and CLEAR video.
Track satellites in space and time in 3d
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html
Thanks for talking about your sighting. Have seen similar objects, which I don’t think were satellites. To help you determine whether it was a satellite go onto “Heavens-Above” and check the satellite schedule for your area. Also, there’s a more thorough site recommended by AboveTopSecret but I don’t recall the name of it. It might be on their site somewhere. A good satellite site will tell you the time of the flyover as well as the direction. A close friend just saw her first UFO tonight, so maybe something’s going on! Good luck!
Very large craft sighted in Oct. 1993 Torrance,Ca
rectangle shape,cloaking against the night stars
lights underneath the shape grew brighter when i got out of my truck to get a better look the object moved towards my direction. no doubt about it the craft knew
I was there, absolutely no sound as it hovered in my direction slightly turning, it did emit waves like reversed magnets being forced together, approximately 3 large telephone poles high. Visual 5 minutes, the craft slowy lifted a bit higher facing west towards Redondo beach no sooner then i blinked it was gone. afterwards missing time, hearing is very sensitive. Thanks Jo
* Just one more thing – I don’t think people understand what you mean by “low-flying.” I noticed just now on CoastoCoast that you didn’t estimate how high the object was, so I think people are thinking higher than it actually was.
Leon KS, off the little Walnut river, MY dad and his Boss, both Men worked at Boing Aircraft on experimal flight line, both worked with Military and Boings state of the art aircraft, some top secret suff he never told me about, both men in this line of work over 20 each,4of the 2men and their wifes, none of them ever drank, nor were they that day, they had camp on the river to fish all day, at 2:00am they were setting getting ready to check the lime lines, when they saw a flood light comeing down the river, from a low altitude, 25-30feet off the river bed, it did not make a sound as it got 35 yards from them the Crickets Spoted, he sad it was so Quite you could here your heart pound, then it was over them, more lights turn on, Red, Green Yellowish it made a low purring noise, and was gone, I mean gone, dad said in a few seconds it was outsite up in space, all 4 of them showed up at my gradfathers farm house in mins, my dad and red looked if the side of their face were sun burn, they both agreed it was NO airplane or helicopter, till the day my dad died or my now 72 year old mother they never changed this story this was in 1966, I belive.
As far as satellites go, I subscribe to a NASA site that I pick 10 satellites to watch and I get emails 3 times a week about satellite pass predictions. Along with those emails, I get two articles that mention any predictable and visible space activity that’s about to happen. I’d probably hear about some satellite that would behave in that manner through that.
Also, I get regular emails from a site that announces launches from Vandenberg and what the status is of those launches. True, that’s not all that’s going on up there, but it’s something anyway. What you saw was what you saw. You can only speculate.
We spend time in the middle of nowhere desert when we can, near the top of a mountain, part of a ridge that separates us from China Lake testing grounds. It’s not unheard of to see an F-16 flying upside down over the Panamint Valley floor a couple hundred feet off the ground. Not nearly as fast as what you saw, though. We sit up there in total darkness and face west, toward the top of the ridge at night, hoping to see…. something. Our running joke is the aliens landed down the mountain behind us about a mile, out of view where we can’t see them, and are partying their space suits off.
James,
Please Google “Fast Walker”. I am relatively sure that is the Native American name for what you might have seen. I heard you on the air with Ian.
I have seen a oval shaped wingless UFO in the clear skies over Western Kentucky. I have seen one Fast Walker at night. In May of last year one fell down and was quickly recovered in Decatur, Alabama. Linda Moulton Howe has the story archived on her Earth Files web site.
I read alot of comments but I did not take the time to read if if someone has mentioned what I did. My friend is Colorado’s MUFON director, Leslie. She has been a great UFO teacher.
Cody in Indiana
Man, now you’ve made the big time – Coast to Coast AM. I noticed you didn’t refer to The Art Bell 90s.
I think you saw a UFO. I seen one once. Back in the 1990′s. It was a red light, pulsating over a field in Fife Washington. It was just past sundown. I was in a phone booth talking with my mother. I spotted the weird light and described the thing over the phone to my mother. Conversation kinda dried up. I wondered aloud what the hell it was. Suddenly it deposited something quickly towards the earth. Literally a ‘bright-light-on-a-line’ shot towards the earth. I thought that I blinked then. Actually I didn’t blink. It seemed like I ‘blinked’ but I didn’t. The pulsating light had ‘blinked’ itself away. Disappeared. I’m thinking it was some kind of mini-time-distortion wave that hit me as it flew off.
I have a theory that ‘Faster-than-light’ travel makes you younger. I mentioned it on Coast-to-Coast a couple of times. All I get are giggles. Here’s the logic: The closer you get to the speed of light, time slows down. Time is like a river that flows at a constant rate. The faster you go, the slower the river flows past you. You can’t travel at the same speed as the river or ‘AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT’ because it’s the flow of time (and space) that holds your atoms together (remember Chuck Yeager’s plane nearly vibrated itself to bits before breaking the sound barrier). You can, however, get in a speedboat/flying saucer and travel faster than the river…whereupon the river is flowing ‘backwards’ relative to you.
Ta-Dahhh!…..Fountain of Youth.
Thus, you get older sublight, depending on your speed through the universe. The faster you go, time starts slowing down for you…but travels at the same speed for everyone else. But the moment you pass the light barrier, time reverses itself…and still performs the function of holding your atoms together.
If this theory is true, it would explain how aliens could travel vast distances to reach Earth. They simply travel faster than light for a prerequisite amount of time…de-aging as they go. Then they travel slower than light to reverse the de-aging. They just shift gears back and forth until they get to where they want to go. If you remember, the aliens that supposedly abducted Betty and Barney Hill told Betty that we humans were ‘trapped by time’. Also recall that Al Buelik maintains that the government de-aged him in order to silence him.
So understand that the government, if they had FTL spacecraft, would have to keep it a secret in order to maintain order. If everyone knew that the U.S. Government had ‘FTL capable ships that could de-age anyone lucky enough to get on the ship, there would be chaos. Everyone would rush into area 51 trying to hitch a ride on the FTL fountain of youth.
I also had a UFO dream once. I fully illustrated it and posted it on-line. Just google ‘garthsdream’…or ‘garthfromseattle’…and you can link there.
Sorry if anyone gets weirded out by all this.
Try giggling at it til it all goes away.
Garth – Artist of Paradox.
Hmmm…I saw a similar looking object moving west-east one warm summer night just after sundown while I was sitting on a houseboat moored on Lake Shasta, CA. It didn’t move very fast as a brilliant white line across the horizon. I even had time to yell down to my mates and tell ‘em to come up and take a look. Whatever it was (likely a metoer skipping off the atmosphere) must have taken a minute to travel all the way across before it instantly disappeared out of sight.
I took the event in stride since I have seen many UFOs in the sky, some very close, others not. Last alien looking craft I saw was by Lake Union in Seattle, about 11 p.m. in the late fall of 1997. I was standing outside getting a breath of fresh air when something caught my eye just above me, maybe 300-400 feet. It was a small triangular shaped craft (maybe 20ft on two sides and 12 ft on the backside). It also had “walls” on each side that were maybe 8 ft tall. Funny things about this sighting to me was the time it happened, it was totally black against the city glow and stars, made no noise and yet as it moved slowly away from me towards a major bridge at almost the same height across the lake, I could see the faint glow of two “engines” in the back of it. No other lights were visible. My freinds hate me ‘cuz they didn’t get to see it.
I also saw an intersting sight one winter night in 1993 near Seattle in a small town about 20 miles southeast. It was late and the rest of my family were sleeping(it was 2 a.m.) as I let the dog out on the deck to go do her business while I had a smoke. I was struck by the beauty of the fresh snow that fell earlier so I was scanning the landscape to take it all in. When I looked to the west toward the main road that ran through the valley and our town, I noticed something with an orange glow moving very slowly and floating just above the telephone poles along the road. I was only two blocks away, so I squinted and strained my focus a little and then I could clearly see that it was a winged aircraft, like an F-18. I could also make out the movements of at least two pilots moving around in the orange glow of the cockpit light. The strangest thing is that the craft was only “flying” along at about 15 mph. Once it passed out of my view behind my neighbor’s homes, I ran from the deck to the front picture window where I could see it still floating along. Again, as I watched it go by I could see a pair of red-orange glowing “engines” as it silently floated away out of view. I estimate it was only 50 ft above the road.
My opinion about both of these sightings is that there may be an aircraft design that Boeing is working on at their nearby skunkworks that uses anti-gravity and standard jet propuslion in a hybrid craft design. Needless to say there are plenty of strange things that have been going on at Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas for a very long time, so what I saw really didn’t come as much of surprise to me.
Then again, there was a sighting I had with 11 of my friends back in the late 60s. We were all teenagers joy riding in our cars one night around mid-nite at a location a few miles south of a fairly large midwest rural town (pop. 60K). We were 5 couples and buddies when we took our cars out to a this place where they were building a new sub-division. The blacktop roads were already in but no houses built and it was away from other residents so we used to go there and race around the “track” for kicks. The track also had plenty of sand on either side of it so the idea of killing ourselves seemed remote. We could race and slide and had a blast everytime we went out there.
Except this one night when we were racing and with my car “leading” the other two, it just lost all power. It was odd so I coasted off the side of the road to park. As I did, I looked back in the mirror and didn’t see the other two cars behind me anymore. Once I stopped, I looked back again and I could see they had also pulled over behind me without any power too. We piled out of the cars and scratched our heads and talked about what might be wrong with the cars. We looked under the hood, tried ignition switches and lights again. Nothing…dead.
Feeling a little bewildered and sort of screwed for the moment, we noticed a brigh light (like from the bottom of a helicopter) coming towards us from the south about a half-mile away or so. Again, we were goofy teenagers out for some fun, so we figured one of the local residents heard us and called the sheriffs office to check us out. Feeling a bit doomed to the inevitble, we just stood there and waited for them to get to us. In another minute or so as the light bore down on our location it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t any helicopter.
Before we knew it, the light was directly over our heads about 50 ft high and surrounding it was a dark circular disk with the light on in the center of it. The disk seemed to be about 50 ft in diameter with a curved bottom, like a flying saucer. There was no sound and everyone just stood there looking up in silence with their mouths hanging open before the light went out before it suddenly turned back on with a very intense light for a few seconds. (think close encounters now) Then it began to slowly move off to the south before it swung around to the east and flew off at a tremendous speed to the northeast.
After it left we talked about what happened and some suggested we should call it into the local radio station before I reminded them what a laughing stock two girls from our school had become just the week before when they reported a UFO they saw to the radio people. Instead, we all agreed not to tell anyone, not even the folks. After all, we really didn’t know what it was, so why say anything about it. Besides, who’s going to believe a bunch of teenagers?
So, we got back in our cars and of course they started immediately before we left the area to go home. But, the really odd thing is that when we got there (to my girl’s place) she noticed that we arrived an hour later than she expected since she had to get up early for work the next morning. Go figure…
But, the real kicker was what happened 7 years later when I had another strange encounter with ET. In that “episode”, they actually mentioned to me the incident I just told you about that happened with my 11 friends. Quite the story and maybe someday I’ll tell you the rest…
One explanation I had for the UFO I saw with my friends is that it might have been some sort of solar ejecta– a spinning glob of magnetic material that was attracted to the Earth’s magnetic field. Maybe as it had cooled the magnetic energy it contained was simply following the electomagnetic field lines surrounding the planet. Unfortunately, ET doesn’t buy my explanation, but hey…maybe others will…
We are not alone and never will be…
Enjoy!
Like Chris M. who wrote: “One day in the middle of broad daylight, I saw this silver thing in the sky. At first I thought it was a plane. But I stared at it and couldn’t make out any wings. It just looked like a big silver walnut, but it was very far away and I couldn’t see it clearly. Suddenly, it just vanished. I didn’t see it zip off any direction. It was there one minute. Then it was just gone.” My wife and I were driving through the town of Show Low, Arizona when I saw exactly what Cris described only this thing was within 2000 feet of us. I pointed it out to my wife and asked her to keep an eye on it until I could park the car and get a better look. I turned off the highway and turned around but could no longer see it. My wife had it in view the whole time until it simply disappeared. My wife and I just looked at each other and said “WHAT THE H…?”. I am a pilot, it was not an aircraft.
(Please excuse the draft copy that got accidentally posted above)
Your position . . . you believe there is life elsewhere in the universe, but are not sure they’re visiting the earth . . . is a safe and logical one, and similar to my own. My gripe is this. People always ask me “Do you believe in UFO’s?” Of course. That means Unidentified Flying Object — of which I’ve seen a few in the skies. But it doesn’t automatically mean you believe that believe that UFOs are mechanized crafts from another planet. If your answer is “No”, you don’t believe in UFOs (trying to anticipate their prejudice by taking the term in the popular idiom as a spacecraft from elsewhere), they immediately reply, “Oh, so you don’t believe in life in outer space.”
As typical when people have scant factual knowledge on a subject like UFOs, the strength of their opinion is inversely proportional to their ignorance. People use the UFO’s, and spiritual pursuits, to fulfill a need for mystery and motivation (which is a good thing); but they never pursue matters deeply enough to realize that the fact that each of us is a conscious entity (woven from interpenetrating and mutually self-sustaining standing wave fields)
existing in this particular spacetime dimension is an astounding mystery in and of itself. (The average book on physics includes more mysteries and more magic than all the sacred tomes of the world.)
To summarize my position: Yes, I believe in UFOs; Yet I have seen no good reason to conclude they are mechanized craft from other planets; Yes, I believe the universe is filled with life and consciousness, since both are embedded in the universe as emergent properties of the creation process.
It was most likely was a shallow angle meteorite. Night sightings are very inaccurate-just basically lights in the sky.Could be anything.
God,the spelling is AWFUL on this website.Did anyone graduate from HS and learn English 101??
Are most young people illiterate these days?
Sheesh!
James, I’m a long time lover of your pages (especially the Art Frahm section) but it’s been a while since I’ve visited. I was totally surprised to find links from Coast to Coast AM this morning and well, here I am.
I’ve always believed that UFO’s exist but I have never seen anything that I could remotely think was one. My Mother once told me that she had seen one, and her description was pretty classic. Orange glow, cigar shape, etc. I wished I could’ve been at her house that time to see it too. I admit that I may have not thought it was a UFO that she saw but my eyesight was always better than hers. Then again, I may have agreed with her and been in awe.
You saw what you saw. I think the speed of the thing rules out a lot of earthly possibilities. I’ve never seen a horizontal shooting star as some have suggested and think that explanation is unlikely.
I, for one, keep my eyes on the sky whenever I step outside at night. I’m fortunate to live where the skies are usually clear and without much light pollution. The view of the stars alone is astounding, and although they only change with the time of night and the seasons, I keep hoping to see something that can only be explained as a UFO. Someday, or night, I will.
Don’t know if I’d want to fly on a Boing.
On September 18th of 1994 I witnessed a flying saucer in broad daylight. I use the term “flying saucer” and not “UFO” because the first term better depicts the imagery. It looked like a silver disc shaped object that glinted in the sun. I had never seen anything like it before, nor have I seen anything like it since.
It moved in ways that defy inertia. It appeared to act with intent. And when it left, it did so with such an acceleration that any occupants inside should have been crushed meat.
I have no explanation. I find the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis to be fully lacking in evidence. I’ve yet to see any factual evidence in support of typical UFO folklore: the Roswell crash; Gray aliens, Reptillian aliens, Nordic aliens, abductions, blah blah blah blah blah. I think it’s all garbage. Or, better put, those promoting these crackpot conspiracy theories have got nothing to back them up with.
However, the multiple simultaneous military radar contacts during the 1990 Brussels, Norway incident is rock solid evidence for a physical cause. Simultaneous triangulation rules out the possibility of anomalous atmospheric effects like heat inversion. The same type of incident with multiple simultaneous radar contacts occurred at Rendalsham Forest in the UK. Such radar contact occurred in the United States in Washington DC during the mid 1950s.
Those radar contacts are physical evidence that something made out of matter (atoms) was up there moving around. That’s as much as is known. And honestly, I think that’s about as much as the world governments know too. Which is probably why they don’t want to talk about it. Not because of conspiracy to hide the truth, but because they don’t know the so-called truth either.
I had absolutely no interest in UFOs prior to witnessing that event. But now, almost fifteen years later, I’m still bothered by what I saw. Not because I fear alien invasion, but because to admit such a thing publicaly is to incite ridicule and derision from even close friends. And yet, something VERY REAL is going on here. And we have no idea what it portends. These UFO events may well have no military significance whatsoever. Or they may not. But as long as competent members of our scientific community refuse to conduct serious research into this matter, such work will be left to incompetent amateurs who would appear to be causing more damage than good with their populist conspiracy theories.
Eh? I referenced them right away.
I’ve seen a similar happening. We had just moved to the DC area. The light was a red dot in the sky though.
It moved side to side / up and down and then zip…and vanished.
Woke up to coasttocoastam and you talking. Can’t figure out within a minute or two being awake, I was chuckling. It continued while relieved myself and brushed my teeth. I think it was speed remark that started it.
RE; Friday FEB. 6 Thursday FEB 5th I went out in the back for a smoke and noticed a fast moving light comming inbound from the east at a very fast clip . To my amazment it began to slow so by the time it was over my house it was moving slower that an airplane . I know this because I live it the flight path of an airport. I walked in the back and yelled for my wife and sons we all met at the front door at the same time. Walking out I explianed what I had seen and then their it was . Floating like a balloon in the breeze about 400ft up. A white orb with a red outer lining as if it was still hot from re entry. we watched for several minutes until it just floated on out of sight in the east. Question were was the person that reported a simular sighting . Could our sighting be the object he spotted . We are in south west TX and from our home we can see approx. 200-250 nautical miles.Time seen in back yard was maybe one minute then moving to the front another 3-4 minutes.
Dear People; Here’s the “UFO” delusion deconstructed:
This is yet another inconsequential “UFO” report. The irrational “I saw some ‘thing’ in the sky I couldn’t identify” meme originated in 1890′s newspaper hoaxes–and an ever-gullible public is still taking the bait.
The failure to identify, a negative, cannot be the basis for a positive identity of any kind–much less the most unlikely, extraordinary identity that most imagine upon hearing the otherwise vacuous “UFO”.
If there was some “thing” other than the ordinary of any kind resident in our sky, we all know it already! But of course such an absurd situation does not exist. It’s all merely a popular myth, a collective delusion.
There are no “UFO” facts. What’s a REAL “UFO?” No one can say. If they could, then it wouldn’t be a “UFO”.
Endless inconsequential flying-saucer fairy tales and impossible conspiracy fantasies are not required to explain what is only one example in several centuries of documented, well understood collective delusions.
>> The “Null Hypothesis” for UFO reports, of which I am one of a handful of champions, states that no extraordinary stimuli are required to produce the entire array of public UFO perceptions in all their rich variety, wonderment, and terror. Known phenomena have produced all types of what is commonly known as “UFO reports”, including apparitions of flying disks, radar and radio interference, terrifying chases and “intelligent maneuvers”, telepathic messages, “missing time” and hypnogenic narratives, recollections of participation in military UFO retrievals, actual “secret documents”, and so forth. There seem to be no types of reports which have not been, on record, produced at some point or another by prosaic stimuli and/or circumstances. …<<
http://www.skeptically.org/skepticism/id11.html
http://www.debunker.com/texts/black_box_approach_to_ufo_perceptions.html
On Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009, while driving in Hemet, CA, I saw what sounds like your “UFO.” I was waiting in the left turn lane, facing north, looking up at the traffic signal. It was twilight, about 5:30 p.m. As I watched for the traffic signal to change, a bright light, luminous green in color, shot across the sky from west to east, wiggling tadpole-like. “Did you see it?” I asked my husband. He had not. My comment was that it probably was a meteor, but that I had never seen one move horizontally. Like you, I kept looking out the windshield to see whether there would be another appearance of the object, but traffic lights change, and one must move on.
There is no way that it was the ISS, as I weekly go to the NASA site and check for sightings from our area. Believe me, I go out for viewings regularly–my husband’s response is generally, “Did it look the same as always?” However, I have also seen many meteors, and there is the question about the “greenish ones” in addition to the horizontal movemet. Only once have I seen the “jiggling motion” you described, and that was with a huge fireball sighting on New Year’s 2000.
As I listened to you last night I was convinced I had seen the same object as you, but I see we differ on the sighting date.
I have no idea if you will read this or not, but in traditional X-Files/bad sci-fi tv show/movie plot-making, here goes.
I saw the same thing last spring.
It was at a friend’s parent’s house in southwestern Missouri, around 11 or so. We were out on the porch and I happened to look up to see a light…meandering…across the sky. It was pretty fast, moving in mostly a straight line, but would jig to the right and left every so often. None of us could believe it and dismissed it as just one of those things. Now, I’ve always wanted to see something unidentified, as you have, and I’m sure your desire is a bit longer in the tooth than mine (I just turned 41 recently) and grew up reading all my dad’s UFO and alien magazines and obsessed about seeing UFOs everywhere. Of course, no one believed it when I reported seeing one. Kinda goes with the territory of being an inquisitive 10 year old. Anyway, maybe it’s the same one, maybe it was just coincidence.
“Night sightings are very inaccurate-just basically lights in the sky.Could be anything.God,the spelling is AWFUL on this website.”
Yes Linda, and so is the non-usage of space after punctuation marks.