Hallowe'en and UFOs

Well, Hallowe’en is ‘ponst us once again, and this time last year we had an interesting discussion concerning personal experiences with ghosts.

Now I think we should open the floor to UFOs. As everyone knows from watching The Simpsons, UFOs are full of giant green monsters with wiggling arms and evil designs, and if this does not put UFOs squarely into Hallowe’en’s camp, well then, may the Headless Horseman overtake me tonight!

And without further ado:

Long ago I was aboard a mighty warship, traversing the Pacific on important federal business. At the time of the, well I guess I’ll have to come out and say it, the “incident,” I was on the bridge of said man o’ war, serving as Junior Officer of the Deck (JOOD), the number-two guy to (and in training for) the Officer of the Deck (OOD), who job it was to ensure that the ship was going where it was supposed to be going and we weren’t running anybody over and that sort of thing. This particular guy was the lone black officer on the ship, a dour and taciturn man who seemed to be in a perpetual state of piss-off. I didn’t much like him, but we got along.

We had the 4 am - 6 am watch. Most watches are for four hours, but the early-morning and late-afternoon watches are broken into two mini-watches (or “dogs”) so that the watchstanders on both dogs can have breakfast and dinner. The OOD and I were both grimly tired but game for whatever might happen, which is the way things get for everybody after a few days at sea. There are many watches to stand (usually at least eight hours a day), and on top of that huge amounts of “regular” work and training and drills. Eighteen-hour days are pretty much the norm.

We were thousands of miles from the U.S. and hundreds of miles from the remotest speck of land. Our radar showed absolutely no shipping anywhere. It was just us out there, all by our lonesome. There was nothing for the OOD and I to do but stare at the empty ocean as we kept chugging along on a dead-straight course. The sun had just come up. It was very cloudy but not overcast; the clouds were small and flat, low in the sky, spread everywhere, the lower halves lit by the still-rising sun and the upper halves dark gray.

The OOD and I had long since tired of talking to one another. We were standing at the chart table and for some reason both sets of our bored, bored eyes happened to be looking at the horizon just to starboard of the bow when all of a sudden ...

... a round, cloudy shape formed on the horizon and began to rise up. It was the shape of a hot-air balloon, covered with a film-like mist of sorts but inside this mist it was bright, glowing. One half of the ball glowed a bright green, the other half a bright red. Like a navigational light. As it rose it left a cloudy trail beneath it, like the string of a balloon. It rose from the horizon and lost itself in the low-hanging clouds in the space of two seconds.

It was this size: stretch your arm out, look to the horizon, and hold your thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. An object that would fit in that space would be a good-sized cruise ship.

The OOD and I silently continued staring at the spot where this thing had appeared and disappeared. Talk about not being able to believe one’s eyes. This was the sort of thing that you obviously wanted to watch over and over at least a thousand times before you could make any kind of conclusion.

I finally looked at the OOD. He looked at me. And all I said was, “Should I ... log it?”

He quickly shook his head. “Naw.” And walked out to the port bridge wing for the 20th cigarette of the morning.

We never discussed it again.

The only explanation I can come up with is that it was some very weird ball lightning.

But I could be wrong ...

What’s your UFO story?

On 2005-10-13 15:40, Satan's Sin wrote:

...The only explanation I can come up with is that it was some very weird ball lightning....

... peyote...

Well since you said you were in the Pacific that eliminates all that Bermuda Triangle bullshit. Volcanoes erupting on small Pacific islands have been known to play hell with aircraft, but never heard nothing about ships. I hope nobody onboard was screwin' with the ship's Degaussing System! That shit'll mess you up!

Good story, Satan's Sin.

I sell UFO and paranormal books on eBay all the time because the old ones bring good money and frankly, they hold no interest for me. I'd rather pass them on than keep one and try reading it. However, I do have an interesting story of my own:

I was in my late twenties. A group of friends from various churches, including myself, had just finished building a water tank for a school in the mountains of Bolivia. I enjoy doing occasional missionary work and though I do believe in angels and demons and the whole spiritual realm, I was noncomittal on UFOs. I had no first-hand experience of one.

We were on our way to the Amazon jungles of Brazil for some much anticipated R&R after the work trip in Bolivia, but first we needed to catch a connecting flight in Buenas Aires, Argentina. I was sitting across from a friend in his thirties, next to the windows, in that row of seats that face each other on some planes, just behind first-class. My friend's wife was sleeping next to him, as were all the other members of the group. My friend and I were the only ones awake in our row, as it was late at night, near 1:00am or so. We weren't tired for some reason and instead, were up talking, swapping stories of travel and countries we had visited.

The plane had begun its descent into Buenas Aires, which we could see was covered by a layer of clouds, which we could see very dimly below us. Our window seats were near the left wing of the aircraft, and much like Satan Sin's story, we both happened to look out at the wing at the same time. We of course both noticed something immediately that alarmed us greatly.

A small jet or private plane seemed to be descending right along with us at a dangerously close distance off the wing, maybe only a hundred feet away from us. We couldn't actually see the body of the plane itself, because it was so dark, but we could see it's three lights which we assumed corresponded to the wing and tail lights of a small plane. It was keeping perfect pace with our much larger jet and was holding a fixed position right off our wing. We could see our own light at the tip of our wing and knew these other lights were not part of our plane.

"Should we wake the others?" I asked. We discussed a bit and decided that waking the others would only cause undue panic. Obviously the pilot and co-pilots must be aware of this plane in near-collision with us and were doing everything they could. They had not announced it on the p.a. system, and so we should not announce it either. The fasten seatbelt sign was on, because we were descending, so we didn't think it wise to walk up to the cockpit and say, "Hey pilot, did you know you've got a small plane right off your left wing", so we stayed buckled into our seats with our faces glued to our windows.

Then the really unnerving thing happened. Just as we began to descend into the first wispy tendrils of cloud-layer above Buenas Aires, the lights of the aircraft off our wing slowly "rotated" 180 degrees, while still descending at the same angle and speed. Then the whole vehicle shot off towards the horizon at a fantastic speed, eventually disappearing from view. Then we were into the thick of the clouds and couldn't see anything anymore. My friend and I were whispering to each other excitedly; "Did you see that!" and "What in God's name do you think that was anyway?". But still, we decided not to wake the others. Soon we passed through the could layer and saw the lights of Buenas Aires below us. We landed without any other incident, and never did get a chance to talk to the pilots.

Both my friend and I kept completely mum about the incident for the rest of the trip. Knowing how fond the whole group was of practical jokes and humor, we knew that no one would believe us anyway. We kept it between the two of us.

Sabu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PubTThou01.jpg

I'm not a very good story teller, not do I know how I can possibly describe what I, my husband, and a male friend all witnessed in the mountains of CO. at around 1:00am...
We had just been in Cripple Creek gambling.( this was maybe just 2 years after they turned the town over into a gambling area)
Around 12:30 we decided we had better hit the road because were were camped on the other side of the mountains near the Royal Gorge.
We were still pretty near to Cripple Creek but once out of town there really wasn't much houses around. The moon was up but not full and there were no clouds.
We had seen some deer standing around here and there which is nothing unusual. We were all looking out the windows cause this was a new route through the mountains for us and we were trying to follow the the directions that we got from the local Sheriff back in C.C. Suddenly this huge thing floated across the road just in front of us. All you heard in the car was the sucking in of our breath! and in unison, we all said, "wow! did you see that!" It disappeared as soon as it crossed the road, and to describe it as floating across the road isn't quite right, but it didn't move like a animal and it was too big to be a person. It was a very odd shaped thing that I still can't fully describe today. It wasn't a cloud either although that comes the closest to what it looked it.The thing glowed lightly as it crossed the road.
Even the men were frightened by what-ever-it-was and we were all relived when we finally got down out of the mountains and started seeing homes again.
Gives me the creeps just to think about it.

You see things and say, Why? But I dream things that never were, and say, Why not!

[ Edited by: exotica59 2005-10-17 12:10 ]

On a big ol' warship, wouldn't all those instruments they have pick something up?

Radar, etc..?

I hope it's all true, I'd like a ride in one some day.

Geeky --

On warships there are two basic types of radar: surface search and air search (there is also AEGIS, but let's not get into that). Air search can't see targets below 500 ft. (roughly), and surface search couldn't see contacts above that height.

On our ship, since we didn't have an anti-air mission, we didn't have an air search radar at all, although our gun turrents had little bitty radars they used for targeting, surface or air, but those were only on during actual gunnery practice.

So. No one was looking at the surface search radar when the UFO appeared for its brief two seconds. And then when it had zipped up into the sky, there was no air search radar to track it.

Good question, though!

[ Edited by: Satan's Sin 2005-10-17 14:48 ]

Last year I was watching TV in bed when I heard my dog start to growl at something.

I went into the dining room to see what the problem was and all these lights were flashing everywhere, like a million flashlights shining in on the walls, similar to a disco ball, but I couldn't figure out the source.

I went into the kitchen and it seemed that they were coming from the back yard. I was not wearing anything at the time, so lights flashing all over the place made me run into the washroom to throw some PJs on.

When I came back 2 seconds later the lights were gone. I opened the back door, nothing. Not a peep from anywhere. I thought maybe police had been chasing someone through the yard, or maybe a helicopter was shining a search light in my windows, but there was no evidence of anyone or anything anywhere around the house, at all.

It was totally confusing, since it seemed like so many different lights coming from everywhere all at the same time. There was never any sound, and the dog was pretty freaked out. She reacts more to smell than sight.

A UFO is the only conclusion I have been able to come to.

I've never had a UFO experience, but my dad is a Navy veteran who worked on the deck of the U.S.S. Ranger (an aircraft carrier) as one of those guys who directs the planes with those pointy flashlights.

Anyway, he said UFO sightings were very common, and that the pilots often joked about sightings that happened almost on a daily basis.

He said once a newer pilot actually made a formal report about his UFO sighting. That pilot was called away by some higher-ups and wasn't seen for a few days. When he returned the pilot denied that anything had happened at all.

... is the mothership considered a ufo?...

About 9 years ago, in the early part of March 1996.
My Grandfather picked me up from work one night around 8 or 9 PM.
The street we were on is a very busy part of town.
Many cars, businesses and homes for about a 10 mile stretch.
But out by the mountains, at the end of the 10 mile stretch of road, in the outskirts of town, it gets pretty dark and begins a desolate part of the Mojave desert.
Back to story... we're driving down the busiest part of town and I see at the end of the road, by the outskirts, there are 4 lights in the night sky. Very, very, very bright lights.
Definitely not stars, they were sitting to low in the horizon and were in front of a mountain range.
All 4 lights hovered at the exact same altitude and all spaced pretty evenly apart. A fifth light would fade in and out every now and then.
I spotted it right away and asked my grandpa if he saw it too, he giggled and said "sure, it was probably a UFO". Except for the fading 5th light, these lights never moved, when we eventually made our turn home, the lights were no longer in our line of vision and we quickly forgot about them.
I don't think Grandpa and I ever mentioned them again to each other. He passed away not long after.
Even though our local military base closed years before, I just assumed they were some sort of wacky military thing they were doing out in the desert and figured there would be something about it in the next days newspaper.
The following day I asked people I came across if they had seen it, I looked in the paper...nothing, no one knew what I was talking about.
Geeez! Do people ever look up???
Anyway, I wont ever forget it because it was like nothing I had ever seen before and have certainly not seen since, well..except for...
This weekend I turn on the boob tube and a UFO show was on, being narrated by Peter Jennings, I remembered this thread and decide to watch it.
Jennings starts talking about some UFO sighting incident and shows some images of what people saw in the sky above Phoenix AZ in 1997.
I sat there amazed. It was the EXACT same thing Grandpa and I saw that night on our way home, in the Mojave Desert about a year prior to the Phoenix sightings.
I still don't know what Grandpa and I saw in the sky that night, does really it matter...who knows? dooodle-doooodle-doooo...

a picture of the Phoenix sighting...

[ Edited by: DawnTiki 2005-10-17 23:39 ]

Okay, I've had sightings of strange lights acting eratically, and even a missing hour during a long drive home, but about 12 years ago something interesting happened. I was renting a studio apartment that was converted from a 2-car garage. It had a skylight over my bed. Early one morning (still dark) I awoke suddenly, and saw the silhouette of and alien shape, on the roof and looking through the skylight. We both stared at each other like two deer caught in the headlights. A few seconds later it pulled back and out of view. My instinct was to grab a bat and charge out the door to confront it, but I was inexplainably paralized. It took about ten minutes before I could get up, but by then I had no intention of going out the door. The bastard must have hit me with some kind of immobilizing beam or something.

On 2005-10-17 23:05, DawnTiki wrote:
About 9 years ago, in the early part of March 1996.
My Grandfather picked me up from work one night around 8 or 9 PM.
The street we were on is a very busy part of town.
Many cars, businesses and homes for about a 10 mile stretch.
But out by the mountains, at the end of the 10 mile stretch of road, in the outskirts of town, it gets pretty dark and begins a desolate part of the Mojave desert.
Back to story... we're driving down the busiest part of town and I see at the end of the road, by the outskirts, there are 4 lights in the night sky. Very, very, very bright lights.
Definitely not stars, they were sitting to low in the horizon and were in front of a mountain range.
All 4 lights hovered at the exact same altitude and all spaced pretty evenly apart. A fifth light would fade in and out every now and then.
I spotted it right away and asked my grandpa if he saw it too, he giggled and said "sure, it was probably a UFO". Except for the fading 5th light, these lights never moved, when we eventually made our turn home, the lights were no longer in our line of vision and we quickly forgot about them.
I don't think Grandpa and I ever mentioned them again to each other. He passed away not long after.
Even though our local military base closed years before, I just assumed they were some sort of wacky military thing they were doing out in the desert and figured there would be something about it in the next days newspaper.
The following day I asked people I came across if they had seen it, I looked in the paper...nothing, no one knew what I was talking about.
Geeez! Do people ever look up???
Anyway, I wont ever forget it because it was like nothing I had ever seen before and have certainly not seen since, well..except for...
This weekend I turn on the boob tube and a UFO show was on, being narrated by Peter Jennings, I remembered this thread and decide to watch it.
Jennings starts talking about some UFO sighting incident and shows some images of what people saw in the sky above Phoenix AZ in 1997.
I sat there amazed. It was the EXACT same thing Grandpa and I saw that night on our way home, in the Mojave Desert about a year prior to the Phoenix sightings.
I still don't know what Grandpa and I saw in the sky that night, does really it matter...who knows? dooodle-doooodle-doooo...

a picture of the Phoenix sighting...

[ Edited by: DawnTiki 2005-10-17 23:39 ]

Dawn, There have been several sightings like this over the years, I believe they're something like a UFO toy I used to make for fun years ago: you take that clear plastic that they use for covering dry cleaning (you can buy it by the roll) & seal the top, heat seal if you can, tie off the top tightly if that's all you can do. Attach large paper reinforcers (about 1x2 inches) with glue near the bottom on both the inside & outside and punch a hole through it, you'll need 3 to 5 depending on the size of the bag. Tie monofiliment through the holes, leaving about 1.5 - 2 feet of line hanging down. Take a sterno can, still sealed, & punch holes through the outer rim with a hammer & nail, as many holes as you have in the bag, and tie the sterno can to the bag. You'll need to use smaller sterno cans for smaller bags, larger for larger bags, you'll probably need to experiment to find the right size. Pop the top off the sterno, light the sterno with a lighter & partially cover the top again. open the bag over the sterno can, holding it open & keeping the bag away from the sterno can, then remove the top from the sterno can. As the air above the sterno can heats up it fills the bag & lifts it off into the night, where it's small, eerie glow can be seen for a long way off... We made some really big ones & attached small flares to them, hanging below the sterno cans, which could be seen for miles as they floated off, heading towards New Jersey.

On 2005-10-26 13:36, freddiefreelance wrote:

On 2005-10-17 23:05, DawnTiki wrote:
Take a sterno can, still sealed, & punch holes through the outer rim with a hammer & nail, as many holes as you have in the bag, and tie the sterno can to the bag. You'll need to use smaller sterno cans for smaller bags, larger for larger bags, you'll probably need to experiment to find the right size. Pop the top off the sterno, light the sterno with a lighter & partially cover the top again. open the bag over the sterno can, holding it open & keeping the bag away from the sterno can, then remove the top from the sterno can. As the air above the sterno can heats up it fills the bag & lifts it off into the night, where it's small, eerie glow can be seen for a long way off...

1 problem Freddie, where on earth would an Alien get a can of sterno? :wink: