My UFO Story

I read about John Lennon's UFO sighting. It happened while he was living in NYC. People often say that UFO sightings only happen out in the boonies, but Lennon's happened at night in one of the world's largest cities.

I don't think you're nutso, snood. There have many UFO sightings by perfectly rational, sane people! :wink:

What do you think they are, SC?

I've heard it suggested that UFO's are simply experimental aircraft being tested out by our own Air Force! This theory is based on the fact that some UFO sightings have happened near air force bases.

But, I dunno. Take Lennon's sighting, for example. What Air Force base is near NYC? (I mean one where they would actually be testing out air craft)

If you had some technologically advanced, super-duper aircraft you wanted to test, but you wanted to keep it "top secret," would you be flying it over NYC?

I think UFO's may be one of those inexplicable things for which we just don't have a reasonable explanation.

But I'd have to agree with those who say that considering the scope of the universe, is it really so unthinkable that there might be intelligent life on other planets?

Still, I'm not worried, snood. I think you and Kickycan could kick their little green butts!

I got a little chill up my spine reading that. I don't know what it is you saw, but I believe you saw something.

I have not sighted anything of the sort, but my brother says he has. We are close, and seeing his reaction and conviction I believe he saw something.
This was when he was about 15 or so. We lived in a small town surrounded by farmland. Wide open fields and sky. His story is that he was out at a friends farm, and they were bouncing on a trampoline at night. He described something very similiar to your story - hence my chills! And his friend apparently saw it as well.

Judging by the fact of how freaked out they both were for ages, I think something was in the sky. Don't know what. But, to this day, my brother will be looking at the sky during walks...especially out in the country...on the look-out.

After all that happened, I started to watch myself. He even got me and some others to go out hoping to see something. I have to admit, it creeped me out a bit. I personally would rather not see them for now.

We lived with a huge yard and trees, and then it led out to the field of our high school. So, there were many times some of us would be out in the school yard goofing off at nights. I never did feel the same about it after his stories. I even started dreaming of aliens (this probably due to that movie Fire in the Sky.

I had a strange experience one evening, snood. It was at the time that my husband was quite ill and I could not sleep. I went to the kitchen and opened the curtains to see if there were an evening star. What I saw has still not been explained. It was a small orb with multiple lights that hung over the intercostal waterway. It never moved, but just hovered, blinking on and off. Occasionally, a wisp of dark cloud would drift across the object and I thought perhaps it may have been an optical illusion. Not so, because when the phantom clouds dispersed, there it was, still blinking and NOT moving. I watched for more than an hour, intrigued, and then I heard the drone of a plane. Both the sound and the sight continued in one place, not moving. For some odd reason, I was not alarmed. Finally, I grew weary and went back to bed.

The next morning, I watched the news to see if there were a possible explanation, but there was nothing. I will never know what it was.

I once told my first wife's uncle of my skepticism, regarding UFOs. He said, "You don't believe in UFOs? One time, my wife and I were driving in New Mexico, between cities. We came on an oval shaped object, hovering over the highway. After a short time, it suddenly shot out a green light, and then it took off, faster than any plane I ever saw, and vanished."

This a few years after a news article appeared in which something crossed a good deal of countryside, and more than one town, in California, shining a green light as it went.

There is no doubt something is there. What? is the question.

Wow! Pretty cool that not only no one showed up to make fun, but some of you actually shared some experiences! I wasn't sure that would happen - thanks, all.
One of the things that gives me chills is that some of the stories are so similar - the hovering, the shining a sort of 'search' light, the incredibly rapid departure....

Letty - that's amazing. Have you told that to many people, and what was their reaction?

When I saw the movie 'Signs', I was fascinated, but I was also frustrated because I know what I saw, but the body of knowledge about UFOs is still relegated to the anecdotal and the fictional.

I have no doubt that many people see, or think they see, objects, or what they think are objects, which are flying, or which they think are flying, and which they are then and subsequently unable to identify. I do not doubt that on such a basis, there certainly are unidentified flying objects. That is not a basis to assert that one has seen a "flying saucer," or otherwise has evidence of an alien visitation.

Always fun hearing from you, Setanta.

As a matter of fact, snood, I told about it on the radio thread while it was still fresh in my mind. The fact that what I saw was a sphere and WAS there is what mystified me. Also the observation that it just hung there and didn't move was contrary to most related stories. I haven't had a chance to tell anyone in particular, but it most assuredly would not bother me to do so.

Meanwhile, Walter has posted this story. Several things about the story seem fishy to me, though. It is translated from German, and quotes Russians who say the information is from NASA. It will have more credibility if someone comes up with an American report from NASA.

No denying folks, including any number of unquestionably "sane, sober, reasonable, intelligent, educated" folks, have seen "something". I've seen some spooky stuff myself. No denying either that while many well documented, credible reports remain unexplained, at the same time there exist many well researched, unambiguously confirmed natural explanations that remain widely ignored by "the faithful" ... ranging from atmospheric effects through zoologic phenomena. Now, since not every sighting has been explained, whaddawegot ... E.T.? Ezekiel's wheels? Top Secret gubmint stuff? Something else?

I for one am confident this little rock in space ain't at all likely to be the only bit of rock with critters on it, and I am confident it ain't at all unlikely critters elswhere and elsewhen would have developed civilizations and technologies functionally the equal of, even superior to, what we've evolved. Absence of evidence by itself is not evidence of absence; if there ain't something/someone else out there, it would be, to paraphrase the late Carl Sagan, "an unimaginable waste of space."

Given what we know of time, distance, astronomy, physics, and biology, what we would consider practical physical travel among the stars and galaxies is a challenge beyond our current means. That of course does not mandate it be impossible, it doesn't even mean that we'll never figure it out ... it just means we don't presently know how to do it, and it says nothing about whether or not the challenge has been met and conquered elsewhere. By best current estimates, the observable universe is something on the order of 14 Billion, give or take a few hundred Million, years old. Here on Terra, we in our current form, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have been around for about 100,000 years, we've had agriculture for perhaps 10 or 12 thousand years, cities for maybe half that, the steam engine appeared a mere 4 centuries ago, the locomotive 2 centuries ago, the telegraph a bit more than a century and a half ago, the airplane little more than a century ago, the man-made orbiting satellite not quite a half a century ago, 25 years ago this past April the Space Shuttle made its first flight, in 1983, Pioneer 10, launched over a decade previously, became the first manmade object to depart our solar system, 20 years ago, Mir became humankind's first "home in space", and in January of 2004, Spirit and Opportunity, the "Mars Rovers", began physically exploring our nearest planetary neighbor. Considering all of that, it only seems to us we've come a long way; in truth the journey's barely even begun ... we've got a long, long way to go before "We" manage to physically "get" any of "Us" anywhere else than "Here". There's a helluva lotta "There" out there, and all that may be said for sure right now is that, while we are beginning to "make plans", we're still stuck "Here".

Is there any reason to expect any other circumstances would govern any Extraterrestrial civilization? Probably not. Is there much we don't know? Certainly. Is there much about which presently we can propose only guesses? Certainly as well, and guess we do - with the result that often, all to often, some of us guess wildly, eager to believe that for which there is no concrete evidence. Again, given what we DO know, including our own historic record, it is quite possible, even likely, that were some Extraterrestrial civilization to stumble across us, the happenstance would be a very big deal indeed for all parties involved. Might "The others" just detatchedly observe us? Possibly, but if so, why should we assume we might be able to detect their presence, if their intent were to be that they remain unknown to us? As long as we're playing with assumptions, it would be reasonable to assume any technology sophisticated enough to get here from some other civilization from somewhere out there in the stars would be equal to the task of remaining hidden to us if that is what "They" wished to do. Equally, perhaps even more, reasonable to assume, would be that a starfaring civilizations' encounter with another civiliation in the vastness of space might be cause for considerable fanfare and eagerness to meet and get to know the new neighbors.

Some folks find assuming "Its gotta be (whatever)" more comforting than accepting and dealing with "We just dunno - yet."

snood, not discounting or disparaging what you saw, and right up front acknowledging I have no idea what might have been behind what you heard at that time, but I note the visuals you describe are not inconsistent with those which accompany relatively distant (like, from hundreds of miles away from the launch point) night time viewing of a major rocket launch's staging evolution; in fact, that's just about exactly what that looks like, even to the point of seeming to be located between mid-distance foreground objects and the horizon though in fact it is well beyond, well above the actual horizon. I'm not saying thats what you saw, I'm just saying thats very, very similar to what you saw. I just dunno ... do you know there was no such event possibly related to what you saw? Do you KNOW there is no natural, or human-caused, explanation for what you saw? As I said at the beginning, I've seen some pretty spooky stuff too, stuff I can't explain. That's pretty much the way I take it; its unexplained, and I'm more inclined to consider "unexplained" a more satisfactory answer than any "Its gotta be" assumption-based guess. I just dunno.

source: Itar-Tass

Timber -
when I say "I saw a UFO", since that means unidentified flying object, I think its the same as saying "I dunno" what I saw.

I just said it in a hell of lot less words than you, is all.

All I got was an unidentifed flying light, Snood. It was a steady, bright green and moved through about 40degrees of arc. It moved in a straight line, with no trajectory, and went out, or disappeared instantly. Distance was unknown, and it was not an aircraft. The port side position light would have been red if it were an aircraft. There was no sound, and it covered the ~ 40degrees in what seemed less than a second, but with an unknown distance, the time doesn't indicate speed.

U does stand for unidentified, of course.

You know, what I witnessed may well have been some sort of spy satellite. I know absolutely nothing of such things, but does that seem a likely explanation? Well, I am glad you created this thread, snood.

My father's house was on the top of a hill overlooking Oklahoma City. He had a pilot's license and watched planes in the night sky frequently. He could identify most of them by the configuration and color of lights as well as the speed. One night in the early '70s, he saw a cluster of orange-colored lights unlike anything he'd observed before. It came from an unusual direction at a high rate of speed, then stopped in midair for a minute or two, then shot off at a 90 degree angle at an impossible rate of acceleration. He didn't believe in flying saucers, but he always said this must have been a UFO. After all, it was a flying object, and he couldn't identify it. He said there wasn't a plane made that could have flown like that.

I have yet to see a UFO. I believe others have seen such things including my mother who described an oblong shape. This was in the summer mid afternoon back in the early 70's.

At first she thought it was a blimp or something but, what freaked her out was the way it moved.

Whatever it was, it had the ability to cross many miles within a blink of an eye according to her eyewitness. Were talking going from one end of the horizon clear to an opposite end within a second or less.

I can't swallow that all sightings are of earthly or natural origin. Although most probably are.

I've seen and experienced other weird things but would almost like to see a UFO.

My sister and I watched two bright lights in the night sky from our back yard in Southern Arizona long before the first Sputnik. We first sighted the lights because they were moving so fast and we thought we were seeing two falling stars. The lights, moved at varying speeds across the sky and sometimes came to a sudden halt. At times there was apparently a large distance between the two ights, and other times they seemed close together. There was no discernible shape, changed brightness several times while we were watching. After a perhaps 10 minutes, my sister went into the house to get a camera while I remained watching. The two lights suddenly streaked away at an astonishing speed. They moved from relatively low on the horizon southward before disappearing somewhere over Mexico. I believe they covered an arc from my position of around 140 degrees from where they began moving at hight speed until the time they were out of sight.

A second experience happened a couple of years later when a car load of kids I was with was returning from a football game against our local rivals. It was late but very clear with no clouds. Someone told the driver to pull over because they had just seen something in the sky. We piled out of the car and stood along the road watching a light low on the horizon that was about half the size of a dime. It seemed to be moving toward us at a relatively slow speed. As it approached it seemed to get higher in the sky. Suddenly it accelerated, crossed the road in front of us and continued north. In less than a minute it shrank to a point of light, made what seemed to be a 90 degree turn and moved even faster until we could no longer see it. This was around the time of Sputnik, and admittedly we had been drinking to celebrate a winning game.

The first experience may have been a weather balloon, except for the phenomenal speed that it crossed what appeared to be a huge distance. The second experience seemed to be something that was at a lower altitude until well after it crossed in front of us.

Those were the only two times I've personally seen an Unidentified Flying Object. It wasn't terribly uncommon for kids growing up in the Southwest during the 1950's saw strange lights behaving oddly, or moving at almost unbelievable speeds. We lived outside a lot and were familiar with night sky ... the time when we most commonly saw strange and unexplained things happening.