December 07, 2004

• Are you sure it wasn't just a Sing-a-Long Ball, looking in vain for the lyrics to your life's theme song? Seriously, though, cool story.
• I saw something once. I'm not prepared to call it a UFO, but it certainly was a flying object that I can't identify. I was about 11 years old, dragged to an outdoor ampitheater staging a production of Oklahoma along with my mother and some visiting relatives. I was supremely bored, having seen it before - and, let's face it, 11 year olds aren't known for either attention spans nor appreciation of musical theater. So, I was looking around, up, everywhere, when I saw something that looked very much like a toy over to the side of the seating, moving slowly behind some trees. As a matter of fact, I figured it *was* a toy strung along some fishing line, having done that trick myself. That is, until it shot straight up at rapid speed and disappeared into a pinpoint of light. I couldn't say how large it was, or how far away, it's been many years and I am not good with judging distance or perspective. It was oval with a flattened dome on top. The entire thing was a dull pewter gray color, the top part had bulges that seemed to be lit from within, and the bottom oval section appeared to have something ridged and spinning inside it, like a turbine. There was a lot of aerospace industry in the area at the time, so some kind of experimental plane/hovercraft is a possibility. Or, it could have been a prankster with fishing line, but if it was, I'd like to know how they managed the grand finale trick.
• I was probably about 12 years old when I saw it. I remember my family had all congregated at my parents' house for Passover, and at the end of the night we went outside to say goodbye as our relatives drove off. Off to the south we say a low-flying object of some sort. It had many bright white lights, kind of like searchlights, moving in all directions. It also made a loud buzzing noise, like a raspy hum. Me, my father, and my grandfather all stood watching it for maybe 15 minutes. It was hard to judge how far away it was, but it didn't appear to be extremely distant. Eventually we got bored and went inside, since it didn't seem to be doing anything particularly threatening or exciting. Since we live in a well-populated area, (Bergen County, NJ,) there were many reports in the newspaper the following day of UFO sightings. I believe the official explanation was some sort of military activity. The only military facility I know of in the area is pretty much a holding station for Korean War-era vehicles, and it's very very small, so I doubt whatever it was we saw came from there. It's quite possible whatever we saw was some sort of military activity, since the thing didn't behave in "typical" UFO fashion. Still, it was pretty weird.
• i receive Filer's Files weekly just to keep track of this fascinating social phenomenon. that's a pretty exhaustive compilation. i've never seen one myself, but a friend did fairly recently. older guy, serious, not prone to things like, um, seeing UFOs. was out walking his dog in suburban d.c. when he noticed this huge trianglular black thing with lights hovering above him. what really freaked him out was that for as large as it was, it was TOTALLY SILENT. what really freaked me out is i'd read dozens of reports exactly like his in Filer's Files.
• I did once, but it was a bullet. Ow. Actually, just a few days after seeing Close Encounters, I was alone with my baby sister at our house way out in the sticks. I was twelve, my sister was two, and it was about eleven at night and dark as hell, no city lights. I felt the ground vibrating. I looked toward a dirt road that ran near our place, and saw these moving lights hitting the tops of trees. Whatever it was was over the crest of a hill, and huge. The lights were rotating and swinging, white and red, and the ground was shaking. I grabbed my baby sister out of her bed, and carrying her, crept through the woods to a place I could better see the road. By now there was a very loud grinding rumble, and I saw coming over the crest a vast and terrible machine. I was scared as hell, but me and my sister were alone, so we stood our ground. It got closer, and the noise was incredible, lights swinging wildly through the trees. Turned out to be one of these. A neighbouring white trash yahoo called Big Gordie had got stinking drunk and stole a road scraper from a logging site, and thought he'd just drive it on home, a-scrapin' all the way. He was called Big Gordie because he had two kids, both named Gordie, one being Little Gordie, and the other just Gordie. I kid thee not.
• Saw something from the terrace at my place, in plain daylight, about a year ago. Imagine a reflecting, inflated metallic bag, tumbling end over end, high over the horizon. A balloon? The point is, it flew past, from east to west in an horizontal path, not like an escaped balloon. No wind, at least at ground level. It was fast; it crossed the sky in about 2 minutes.
• About seven years ago I was driving rather quickly in the dark in East Texas on a two lane road through the trees. I saw a white light in front of me through the trees. I couldn't figure out what it was and there was no traffic, so I was rather fixed on it. It seemed to be getting a bit higher. As I got closer, it suddenly moved upward at a much higher rate of speed. It was a light on top of a radio tower. I am such an idiot. The tower was not visible until I was right on top of it, so the light seemed to move upwards because of the changing angle as I drove. I am a dumb jackass.
• Walking to the car at night with my Mum and Dad. Dad was opening the car, when something flew over us, looked to be a few hundred feet high, fast, silent, and bright. Figure it was a meteorite and must have just burnt up before it hit anything as there were no reports of anything. Looked about the size of a football. Very cool, and my Dad is still miffed that he didn't see it (my Mum saw it too)
• Money Jane, I love your story. I too have a story. What my SO and I witnessed wasn't so much an unidentified flying object, but more like an unidentified moving light. Perhaps it was more than one light. I got the distinct feeling it was the same light. One summer night in 1985, my SO and myself decided to go on an all night fishing trip. We went to the clay pit lakes outside of town and set up camp and set our lines. We then kicked back on the north shore of the lake. The night sky was amazing. No artificial lights anywhere and so many stars it was breathtaking. We were watching the sky, looking for falling stars. Off to the south in the sky a brilliant light appeared. It was bigger than any star in the sky, like a large flashlight in the sky. After about a minute it blinked out. A minute or two later, a light, exactly like the first appeared in the eastern sky. Again, after a minute it blinked out. Then it appeared in the northern sky, directly above us. Again, the light blinked out after about a minute. There was no noise, and no light reflected on the land from the light. We watched the light blink on and off in different parts of the sky for about 10 minutes. It creeped me out. I couldn't shake the feeling we were being watched. Neither could my SO. We packed up the tent and gear, left the lines and the boat, and headed home. Went back the next day to get the boat and fishing gear. There are no military facilities near where we were.
• Where was that, Bratcat? I saw something like that on May 31, 1985 in Maryland. Not sure if that's anywhere close to where you were.
• Hello, monkeyfilter! Retrosurf delurking. Nice stories, moneyjane and bernockle! I have never seen a UFO, but I have seen a lot of satellites (including iridium flashes), the space station, meteors and fireballs, helicopters, aircraft and balloons. Landing lights on aircraft are often puzzling, with their sudden ons and offs and their directionality. Police helicopters with big searchlights are otherworldly, and the sound that a helicopter makes is very influenced by its relative orientation. The sounds of aircraft are often distorted by inversions and air layers. Birdflight is surprisingly visible under some conditions. Comets stick out like sore thumbs if you know the sky. Meteors can leave persistent trails, and can appear to emit noise. There's a lot going on up there. The casual observer is often confused.
• Rolypolyman, Missouri. Retrosurf, I hear what you are saying. Perhaps what I saw was a satellite or some such thing as you mention in your post. The lights or light I saw was methodical in its appearance or movement. I have not seen such a phenomenon since. I do remember being very uneasy by the whole thing.
• I've never seen anything that I can actually claim was something weird, although I've seen a black egg tail a jet trainer plane, then suddenly veer off, and about 15 years ago a silver ball fly over Perth. However, my wife, who neither believes in UFOs, ever read about them, nor indeed even watches sci-fi, saw a massive flying triangle hover over her car some years ago, early in the evening. It was massive, silent & well lit with large bright lights. Later I verified that it was identical in many respects to black triangle UFOs seen all over the world. My wife had never heard of any of these, nor seen images of them. A very good sighting due to her non-polluted psyche. Oh, she's sane, too, & does not drink or take drugs. I've been wanting such a sighting since I was a kid, & curse the irony that my skeptic, non-geek wife saw it. Then again, if you follow Vallee's theories of high-strangeness & UFOs, perhaps only those who need to have their reality paradigms altered see UFOs.
• The casual observer is often confused. People can't possibly have seen what they say they've seen, can they.
• In the early 90's I was riding in a car with my mother and older sister. My mother was driving and my sister was in the passenger seat. I was in the back daydreaming when I suddenly noticed my mother and sister talking and pointing at something in the sky. I looked, but didn't see anything. After a few seconds I saw what I can only describe as a silver, elongated egg-shaped thing hanging in the sky. It appeared a little larger than a grain of rice would if held at arm's length. We watched it for several miles until we lost sight of it. It was broad daylight and none of us were drunk, high, etc. We also don't go around seeing UFO's. I have no idea what it was (a blimp?), but I'm sure there's a logical explanation.
• Have never seen a UFO, though I would like to. Life is very unfair.
• Hmm...I too will de-cloak for this one...seems all the weirdos crawl out of the woodwork with stories like these... I've never seen what I would call a UFO, but I did see something I can't explain... When I was, maybe, 12, my sister and a few friends were sliding in the snow on our front lawn. I'd guess it was about 7 o'clock at night and in the dead of winter, so it was pich black outside. I saw what to me looked like an asteroid, tumbling slowly in the sky. Now, imagine a Star Wars (tm) astroid field kind of asteroid. This was something straight out of the movie. Just a lone, tumbling, cratered asteroid about the size of a full moon. I pointed it out to my friends, and they saw it too, so I bolted into the house to get my Dad. He, being an adult, had to put his boots on...then his coat...and by the time HE got outside, it was gone. As an adult (this was 25 years ago) I know how rediculous it sounds. It couldn't have happened. There were no news reports of near-misses (Something THAT big would HAVE to be seen -- wouldn't it?) But I can still see it in my head -- an astreoid. Tubling in the sky. Weird.
• Hmmm...I realllly don't like that silent black triangle thing. *willies*
• A cool articles on the devil triangles.
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• once I ate a few hits of blotter and...oh never mind.
• I was about 15 years old, riding in the passenger seat of my mother's car between two small towns in East Texas (near an air force base). It was around 2:00 in the afternoon with clear blue skies and nary a cloud. I was looking out the passenger window when I noticed the sun glint off of an airplane. I was assuming that it was an air plane, and that it was at around 3,000 feet and a couple miles away. Far enough that I couldn't make out details, but near enough. I would never have thought anything about it, except that while I was looking at it it suddenly accelerated in the same direction the car was heading, and disappeared from view somewhere near the horizon. I've never seen anything like it before or since. Strangely enough, it didn't affect me in the least little bit. But I certainly can't explain it.
• Yow! There's a black triangle hovering just to the left of fuyugare...should we tell him?
• So here's my story: I was at the Fremont Outdoor Cinema a few years back, and before the filum started I was gazing up at the stars (I'm a stargazer, space exploration geek and planetary scientist wannabe). As I was looking around up there I saw a big light moving across the sky, very, very high up. It was moving on a straight path, very fast and when it got directly overhead the light went out to be replaced by a smaller one moving in the same direction. After I got home I consulted a database to check if the MIR space station was passing overhead at the time and sure enough, it was. A couple of months later I went down to California to meet an internet girlfriend and we went camping up near Mt. Lassen to watch the first dock-up of the space shuttle and MIR. We had the exact times it would be passing over us and what direction it would be coming from so we got ourselves set up and at precisely the designated time, a big light came over us in the sky, dimming to a smaller one as it passed overhead. The reason it dimmed was because it was going from the sunlit side of the earth where it was being illuminated, to the dark/night side where it was losing that illumination. I know it's not a UFO story, but I suppose it's close enough.
• I've never seen one either, but I did try to make one recently, and probably will do so again.
• When I was six, my father ran a small municipal airport in north central Texas--basically just a place for private aviators to hangar their planes and a simple runway. We lived at the airport, so I got accustomed to seeing planes landing and taking off throughout the week. I woke up once late at night and looked out my window to see a large, saucer shaped ship hovering over the runway. There were red lights around the perimeter, and it was making no noise at all. Before long, it flew off. Maybe it was real; maybe I had an overactive imagination. Wish I knew for sure.
• Ooh, fun thread, good stories!
• This is my strange experience: Monday, July 3, 2006, City Island NY (Bronx), 6:30 pm EST. I am with my wife, and we are walking our two kids in the stroller during a visit to my dad's home. On the way back to his house, I notice a round dark object in the sky. I ask my wife if she sees it, and she confirms, "Yes, it must be a kid's balloon." "Impossible!" I said, as the altitude was extremely high (a child's balloon at that height would appear as a pin-prick). The object looked very substantial. It skimmed across the sky - much too fast to be a balloon, and slower than an airplane would appear to move. I am familiar with satellites, and this was no satellite. My mind also thought, "weather balloon," but it seemed to move too quickly for that as well. I ran inside my dad's house and grabbed a pair of binoculars. By the time I got back outside, the object was gone. My wife began to tease me. This is the part that really freaked me out: Two nights later, I had a very intense dream. I was being operated on in a futuristic surrounding. Some sort of silver cylinder was injected into my arm with great and sudden force. I did not resist this. In the dream, I had to return to this operation setting two hours later. I was told that a liquid was going to be injected into the previously injected cylinder. It was understood that this was some type of male contraception. I was scared and very nervous, but whoever/whatever was injecting me said, "don't worry, millions before you have had this same procedure, it is safe." I saw a large clear syringe filled with a viscous clear fluid. It was injected into my arm with great force - again. Weird dream, yes. When I awoke in the morning, my arm was in great pain in the very same spot that I was operated on in my dream. That creeped me out a bit, but I shrugged it off as, "I must have slept on my arm weird, and the pain translated into that bizarre dream." A few days went by, and the pain only intensified; my arm was extremely sore-to-the touch in this concentrated spot (and I like to think I have a high tolerance for pain). To my surprise, a defined and circular bruise appeared on my arm in that spot. Needless to say, it has freaked me out just a bit. Everyone I have told this story too is quite skeptical at first, until they see the bruise. I took a couple pictures last night. The pain is beginning to subside, and the bruise has begun to fade... *looks for a tin foil body suit*
• - Any unexplained 'scoop-marks' on your skin? - Ever had a similar dream in the past? - Trouble with sleep paralysis before? Pictures, we need pictures!
• No scoop marks on my body. Never had a similar dream before. I can post a pic tonight when I get home.
• Oh, and I want to say that I've experienced sleep paralysis before, though I'm not familar with the specific terminology. One experience was during a visit to the west coast of Java in Indonesia - it was actually quite terrifying.
• Interesting info on the subject. Aliens or our misfiring synapses?
• Interesting. A couple or so decades back, there were people who would get quite incensed if you said you dreamed in colour -- 'normal' dreams were 'supposed' to be black and white. Dream studies having been conducted on the subject, nowadays just the opposite view prevails. Hard to say how much of what people dream is due to their or their culture's waking beliefs. Do alien abduction scenarios have roots in waking experience of individuals? I think it very likely this is the case.
• Do alien abduction scenarios have roots in waking experience of individuals? Alien abduction scenarios have roots in the drunken experiences of trailor parkites.
• When I awoke in the morning, my arm was in great pain in the very same spot that I was operated on in my dream. Three times in my life, something very much like this has happened to me, but I have never exhibited any bruising or marks as a result. One was the final installment of a series of annual Hallowe'en nightmares I had as a young boy in which I was stalked and attacked by a vampire. I awoke feeling his bite on my leg, two small but extremely painful puncture wounds in my calf. Second was a dream I also had as a kid in which a bunch of cartoon animals (the Shirt Tales, for those of you who remember them) all tried to get a piggy-back ride at the same time. I awoke to a violent back spasm. The last (and worst) one came about ten years ago. Dream of a demon sinking its claws into my chest and grasping my heart. I could feel the "wounds" in my chest, caging my heart in like prison bars, for nearly a week afterward. I'm a firm believer that the mind can do a hell of a lot more stuff than we think it can.
• And the probing, Beeswacky? You can't explain away the probing.
• I've had such experiences several times in the past. Waken up by a 'presence', which seem to overwhelm one just by 'being here' or, in the worst ocurrences, attempting to smother me or try to crush my chest. All the while one can't move, can't scream, and the desperate need to wake up, to free oneself from the paralyzing influence. No Men In Black yet, luckily enough.
• Dreams that occur when you're on the verge of waking can take some of their context from your actual situation. When I was a teenager and reluctant to get out of bed in the morning, my dad used to come into my room, grab my foot and shake it to wake me up. Many years later, thousands of miles away, I dreamt that my dad had come into my room to wake me up. When I awoke, the bed and the whole room were still shaking. I remember being quite disappointed that I wasn't back at home, getting up for school but in a strange hotel room, in a (minor) earthquake.
• Here's a pic I took last night of the bruise, though it is starting to fade already. Did my mind have the power to cause such visible markings? I find it hard to believe, but I remain open to the idea. If anything, it gave me a nice jolt to the skeptic-prone area of my mind. The picture is not the greatest (I have some others), as my son was crawling on me while I was craning my arm for a shot...
• The dream I had last week did not involve any feeling of parlysis or intense crushing fear - though I have had similar experiences to what flagpole has described.
• All the same, I was awake (as was my wife) when I saw the object in the sky. She remains 100% skeptical, while I keep myself partially open to the idea that perhaps there is something out there. I'm not about to become a beliver in Prophet Yahweh anytime soon though.
• Hey, that looks like a hickie... : ) There was a recent AskMefi about misterious marks appearing overnight; theories went from drunken stumblings leaving them to liver problems and allergic reactions. I've witnessed some of those in relatives; odd bruises inside the elbows and/or knees. In these particular cases, related to changes in medication. Maybe something similar in your case, smt? /clicks next pic Oh my good... *What did those aliens do to you??!!?* Oh, wait, that's the Kerokan... whew.
• Damn, the kerokan!!! Aaah, alien probings are nothing compared to kerokan... I take no medications. I do no drugs (aside from the occasional beer or glass of wine). I sleep on a firm mattress. I can't figure it out. *welcomes the alien overlords*
• 'normal' dreams were 'supposed' to be black and white. Dream studies having been conducted on the subject, nowadays just the opposite view prevails. Just like that saying about 'you can't read any writing in dreams'. I've read many signs or phrases in dreams; heck, I've dream that I'm working in the computer and can see every freakin' element on the user interface of my main work app. *sigh* Maybe bugs, smt? A sneaky spider?
• Yes, sometimes your mind can have an effect on your body. for example, among Christians, stigmata are -- not commonplace but -- not unknown. And people under hypnosis may also exhibit marks on their skin. Perhaps it has to do with the strength of one's convictions, I don't know, but such phenomena have occurred and been witnessed many times. However, I don't think it necessary to look for explanations of alien influence in order to explain it, sugarmilktea, although of course ye are certainly free to do so. Suggestion: in future you might want to concentrate your thoughts before falling asleep on some beneficial figure or symbol which you envision as having power to heal and/or protect -- could be anything from a star to Superman to St Francis, whatever you feel has positive energy to heal and/or protect.