I've seen UFOs twice. And by that I mean I've had two experiences, on different days, where I was able to see something in the sky, for far more than merely a fleeting glance, which defied all my efforts to explain it. I've generally kept the details to myself, mostly out of concern that people would think I'm crazy if I didn't. But since being invited to join this blog, I've made plenty of public assertions (some of which I even meant) that might well get me labeled as crazy. Why not share this as well, so that people can know where I'm coming from.
Curiously enough, both sightings were while I was in the company of my Mother.
The first was in the summer, sometime in the early 90's. Off the top of my head, I don't remember what year, but I still have my old diaries so I might be able to find it. My mom was driving her little blue car, and we were going past the appropriately named Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. We didn't pass that way often, and I'd only flown once in my life to that point, so I was looking out the window watching for small planes either landing or taking off. What I saw instead made my head hurt (literally, as I'll get to in a moment).
Hovering above one of the hangers was a large silvery object - what some folks would call "cigar-shaped", I suppose. It was polished, but not bright, and not so reflective as to actually recognize anything reflected on it. Instead, it had what I perceived as a ridged surface - resembling a quonset hut somewhat more than a incomplete and unmarked airplane frame. Of course, it couldn't be either, since it was high above the air. It couldn't have been a zeppelin, either, as it had no canopy/cockpit, no ropes or cables connecting it to the ground, no propeller and no tail fins. Just ridges, I'd say numbering in the high teens, and a little irregular, somewhat organic in shape (though not material). Its lines were smooth and flowing.
I'd say it was at least 200 feet above the roof of the small-plane hanger it floated near, though it's really hard to quantify distances against a cloudless blue sky backdrop. Perspective can play tricks with you. If it was 200 feet up, then it must have been around 60 to 70 feet in length. If so, then the space between ridges If it was higher up than that (but further back on the horizontal plane, and thus just an illusion of being so close) it would have been larger. In any event, it kind of hurt to look at it, like that eyestrain you get when trying to read one row further down than you really can on the doctor's eyechart. I kept my eyes locked on it, despite the pain, and mentioned it to my mom.
There was this thing that logically couldn't be there, but I could see it clearly and pick out details. The ridges were darker than the main body. There was a faint abstract mottling of a purplish-grey along the lower half, which might have been marking or materials difference, but could also have been a reflection of something on the ground below it. It had no visible windows or portholes, and no markings that I would describe as letters or numerals.
Much to my surprise, my mom also saw it, but only after I pointed to it in the sky. Once she saw it, she exhaled in shock, because there it was this huge thing she'd been looking right past without even noticing. Then she mentioned that continuing to look at it was giving her a headache, too. There was no shoulder to pull over on, so we kept driving slowly past. I was able to follow it from window to window as we passed, so I know it wasn't some optical trick reflecting on our windshield. Mom, obviously, had to get her eyes back on the road.
At the first opportunity (the first stretch of road with a shoulder) she pulled over. In the process of getting out, I had to break line of sight to the floating thing. Once out of the car, I couldn't find it again. Neither could my mom. We knew what hangar we'd seen it hovering over, and agreed enough about what it looked like that I'm confident she saw the same thing I did. But it was gone, now. Overall, the experience reminded me of the SEP field from Life, The Universe, And Everything, which I'd read earlier that year (making this the summer of '91, now that I think about it).
The second experience was in December of 1993, in Chanhassen, Minnesota (shortly after I'd started working at the movie theatre). Our apartment complex was out on Lake Riley, so not really "in" Chanhassen in any meaningful urban way. We were walking across the parking lot, which was covered with snow. Mom paused to look up at the sky and then asked if I saw the weird moving lights. I looked up, and there were indeed two lights in motion. They looked very much like the stars around and behind them, except they were moving quickly, and brighter than most of the stars. I told her it was probably just airplanes really far off, and that I was going inside to get out of the cold. Her response was very emphatic, that they weren't moving like airplanes, and that I should watch them for a couple seconds.
Indeed, upon observing, I saw that they were moving in a way airplanes couldn't. The wove in tight circles and even made very sharp corners. I was really cold, though, so I started to say "it's probably helicopters, then" though I knew they were far higher up than I'd ever seen a helicopter fly. In the middle of my statement, they did the impossible.
One of the two of them split in two. Actually, that's not even accurate. It went in two directions at once. The two halves were the same size as the original whole, and I couldn't figure out how we'd missed the presence of a third light before that. A moment later those three lights became two again, and then one. Now I was hooked.
We watched them for 90 minutes, despite the cold. They would come apart and go back together. At various times there were from 1 to 5 lights. They never flew off out of sight, they just repeatedly melded and split. They kept up the crazy manuevers, doing things I'd never then, and have not since, seen a human pilot do in any single manmade aircraft. Sudden rapid accelerations like a jet streaking across the horizon, but then stopping in mid air and hovering for several minutes. Spinning around like a spirograph. Instant v-shaped pinpoint turns of at least 170 degrees. Flying straight up as fast as you can crane your neck to track them. Becoming a single dot in the sky and sustaining that for five minutes of miraculous high-speed turns before breaking up into multiple blips again. Streaking straight at each other on a collision course and then vanishing into one another. Later erupting into a swarm like a firework, then clustering congealing into a single light again and again. This event in the night sky was way more impressive than what I saw of that Blue Angels airshow in Seattle last year. I have no idea what could have caused or explained it.
We didn't have a video camera, and it wouldn't have looked like anything on the polaroid instamatic. We didn't have a phone. We were a long way from anyone we knew - at that point, I'd met one neighbor, and only talked with him at length the one time, and since I knew from conversation that he was a paroled murderer, I certainly wasn't pounding on his door in the middle of the night. There was nothing to do, so we just stood there and watched till after midnight. Eventually the cold and late hour won out over curiosity. They were still flying when I turned in for the night.
I have no good theories about what those were, just what they weren't. I don't think even a Harrier JumpJet can move like those lights, and I'm confident that what I saw in the earlier, closer circumstance wasn't a weather balloon or an atmospheric illusion. Call me crazy if you must, but there's something out there.
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