My Personal close up UFO sighting, 4 decades ago.

At the onset of this post, I would like to state that with regards to UFOs, I am an EXTREME sceptic. I am an amatuer astronomer for many years, am very familiar with aerospace, and I do believe that 95 percent of sightings are simply due to unfamiliarity with aircraft and astronomical phenomena. But I do think some sightings do warrant investigation. In the case of two groups of professionals who ARE familiar with aircraft and sky objects, namely pilots and to a lesser degree, law enforcement. Many of the sightings reported by them fall into that 5 percent that is not so easy to explain. So while I am doubtful of what people see in most cases, I do believe there IS something to it. And for no small reason because I saw one myself once.

And I want to stress that it was in the clearest definition a "UFO" Because I am making no claims as to what it was, other than it was flying and unidentified. I didnt see any aliens, I wasnt contacted, no beams shot out. All in all a pretty boring sighting as sightings go, but it DID happen.


It happened in Michigan in 1967. I lived in Royal Oak, a suburb of detroit. At around the same time, there were a lot of sightings taking place in Michigan, including the famous "swamp gas" sighting of 1966. I was a young boy, 8 years old, and didnt really even know what UFOs were, although I had heard of them, and I have to say they gave me a feeling of uneasiness when I thought about them.


It took place around 3 PM on a semi overcast day in the summer. I was riding a bike around in a parking lot at the elementary school I attended, Grant Elementary ( the school was demolished in the 80s, there is now a park there). The school had a boiler and a brick chimney that was approximately 3-5 stories in height. Another boy was also riding around in the lot, I didn't know him, just a neighborhood kid.

The object first appeared out of the north. It was a featureless lavender, egg shaped object, that was rotating in a way that the small end of the egg appeared to be rotating around the larger end, it appeared to be between 10-15 feet in diameter. It didn't glow, but it was totally silent. When I first saw it, I was just perplexed more than afraid. It came up to where the chimney was,at one point passed in front of it, seemed to slow down momentarily, then changed direction and started to fly towards the east. At one point it was no further than 75 feet from where I was. Looking up at it, I could see in the foreground, at a higher altitude, there was a single engine plane with an overhead wing flying north to south, maybe 3000 feet up, but it continued on its course, ie I don't think the people in the plane saw it because its altitude was just above the tree line. There were two strange aspects to the object I noticed. One was that the thing seemed to have an almost fluid like characteristic, I seem to remember seeing what looked like ripples on its surface, almost like it was liquid. The other thing was that it definitely seemed like it was directing its own movement, not just drifting in the wind. It seemed like it was under intelligent control. It headed off towards the east slowly, I followed it on my bike for a few seconds, until it was lost behind the trees. The whole sighting took less than a minute and it was gone. The other boy did see it, and we talked about it briefly before i rode off after it, but I never saw the boy again after the sighting.

For many years, I didn't give it a lot of thought, primarily because of the weirdness of it, and that it wasn't your run of the mill flying saucer type of object. And in retrospect, that in itself is kind of weird, because I was a kid who saw something unexplainable and never really talked to anyone about it. And in the back of my mind I thought it was a balloon, because I just assumed thats all it could have been . But as time has passed, I am fairly certain that what I saw was NOT a balloon. I have done a fair amount of image searches online and it doesn't look anything like any kind of meteorological balloon or any other type for that matter. Its a bonafide mystery to me and I just wanted to share it with my fellow ATS'ers. I am not saying it was a ship with little green men, but it was something very mysterious, and it seems there ARE some weird things out there in our skies and this thing was one of them. If anyone has had a similar experience, I would love to hear it.

Thanks for sharing, I'm curious why you are an "EXTREME " skeptic after having such an experience?

a reply to: openminded2011

Interesting story.

Have you checked MUFON to see if there were any reports that day? Assuming you knew the day since you were 8 yrs old its probably not reasonable to think you remember the exact day!

S&F

a reply to: jaws1975

I guess I am an extreme sceptic of of people being so sure that they are nuts and bolts spacecraft. And the truth is I don't know WHAT I saw. I am skeptical of the whole grey alien/ abduction school of UFOlogy. I just have a hard time thinking that aliens could look so much like humans, that's my biggest problem with it. And also I have seen a lot of people misidentify space objects, I once had a neigbor on my street swear up and down the planet Venus was moving around in the sky.

a reply to: combatmaster

I think it was towards the end of summer, in august, on a saturday, but I honestly don't remember the date. And that an interesting point, because I remember the event and the key things I noticed, but other things like if there were any other people around, or what I told my parents, I just don't remember.

a reply to: openminded2011

It didn't glow and you didn't mention any
psychological effects.

I got nothing! Thanks for your honest
report.

Kev

a reply to: openminded2011

Thanks for sharing. That was a very interesting and well told story. Also very believable. I guess I am about your age, I turned 9 late in '67. I have only seen one unidentified flying object in my life and that was back in about '96 I guess. I was about to pull in my driveway with my whole family in the van when I realized that I had been watching this thing sitting in the sky motionless for a few moments before I yelled out "hey, what the heck is that thing doing up in the air" or some such thing. It looked like a dumbbell as close as I can describe it to a known object. That's how my 32 year old son describes it too. By the time we got in the driveway and parked to get a better look at the thing it had just disappeared. It went from just sitting there in the sky to gone... Funny, my younger son and I are the only ones who remember seeing it; the rest of the family, ex-wife, oldest son and daughter say they don't remember a thing. We all saw it at the time though.

a reply to: wtbengineer

Thanks for sharing that.

I really think that left hemisphere confabulation
differences when another part of the brain
perceives something handily explains these
observation and memory differences such
as yours.

Oh - and PS: you and I knew each other fairly
well, but others may be misinterpreting my
statement above - it certainly sounds like there
was an anomalous sighting.. with "something"
"there"; but people perceive these things
differently was my point. My bad if you or
someone else didn't get that point.

Kev

originally posted by: KellyPrettyBear
a reply to: wtbengineer

Thanks for sharing that.

I really think that left hemisphere confabulation
differences when another part of the brain
perceives something handily explains these
observation and memory differences such
as yours.

Kev

I guess you can do that with this sighing, but what about the few, probably, million other sightings that are both reported such as this one and those that go unreported perhaps to no one? You have a whimsical response to each and every one? I must wonder when reading many of these instant putdowns on ATS just how much genuine history of the UFO phenomena they had researched before offer their two-cents worth?

a reply to: Aliensun

I don't put down reports of 'sightings'.

I"m gathering information in support of a theory, just
like everyone else.

Just because there has been no evidence of a physical
craft (yet) in reported history does not mean I'm
putting anyone down. I fully acknowledge there are tons
of unusual occurrences that are not simple mis-identification.

Just because I don't agree with some people's hypothesis,
shouldn't be interpreted in a negative manner. They are
also free to disagree with me all they like.

Kev

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Hello KPB, I understand where you're coming from. I do know that a big part of the whole phenomenon is our perception of it. In fact, it seems designed for us to perceive it in the first place.

No, I don't believe in nuts and bolts spacecraft... but something has been going on for a looong time!

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

There were no psychological effects other than bewilderment, you have to understand that the whole event lasted about a minute. It flew over, slowed down a bit, changed direction and flew off. I guess what I was trying to convey was that this was a real thing, that was very strange, and I have no explanation for it.

a reply to: openminded2011

Nice, enjoyed reading your experience. I respect your thoughts on the subject.

originally posted by: wtbengineer
a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Hello KPB, I understand where you're coming from. I do know that a big part of the whole phenomenon is our perception of it. In fact, it seems designed for us to perceive it in the first place.

No, I don't believe in nuts and bolts spacecraft... but something has been going on for a looong time!

Precisely.

Whenever there is a story of a sighting that seems 'realer than real', when
the images seem 'perfect', when someone can see 'nuts and bolts' on the
'craft' even though the craft is too far away to be able to see that kind of
detail --- that and many other tell-tale signs directly indicate the 'real'
nature of the phenomenon; once you are in the know about these tell-tale
markers of a certain type of perception, then you can never be deceived
again, with stories of break-away civilizations, nuts and bolts UFOs and
all the other (sorry- this is my opinion) complete nonsense.

Now that said.

Are there planets of organic beings out there somewhere, that are visited
by other organic beings in nuts and bolts ships?

I find that very likely. It may be 10 Universes over.. but it's out there
somewhere almost certainly.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to happen on Earth..

I loved Star Trek too.. more than most actually.. but sorry..
it's not real anywhere near here -- that's the evidence anyway.

Kev

originally posted by: openminded2011
a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

There were no psychological effects other than bewilderment, you have to understand that the whole event lasted about a minute. It flew over, slowed down a bit, changed direction and flew off. I guess what I was trying to convey was that this was a real thing, that was very strange, and I have no explanation for it.

Yes- that's wonderful. You saw something. It apparently had no mundane
explanation, and you don't know what it was - but it was almost certainly
something unusual. But you don't know what.

Perfect.

Saying "I don't know" is a wonderful thing too.

Kev

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Agreed, the universe(s) is/are a big place. I can't rule out that somebody is visiting somebody else interplanetarily, but I don't believe it has ever happened here. I tend to gravitate toward the Vallee camp, but I have my own specific beliefs about it all. I have my own experiences that have helped to form these beliefs, but by no means have I set out a firm hypothesis for it. I still don't know. And you know what makes this the most difficult to resolve for me personlly? I haven't had any kind of strangeness happen to me at all for a good 20 years!

originally posted by: openminded2011
But I do think some sightings do warrant investigation. In the case of two groups of professionals who ARE familiar with aircraft and sky objects, namely pilots and to a lesser degree, law enforcement. Many of the sightings reported by them fall into that 5 percent that is not so easy to explain.

Let's hope Jim O'berg doesn't read this -- he'll tell you that pilots ARE the worst professionals to trust for properly identifying unidentified flying objects.

originally posted by: KellyPrettyBear

originally posted by: openminded2011
a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

There were no psychological effects other than bewilderment, you have to understand that the whole event lasted about a minute. It flew over, slowed down a bit, changed direction and flew off. I guess what I was trying to convey was that this was a real thing, that was very strange, and I have no explanation for it.

Yes- that's wonderful. You saw something. It apparently had no mundane
explanation, and you don't know what it was - but it was almost certainly
something unusual. But you don't know what.

Perfect.

Saying "I don't know" is a wonderful thing too.

Kev

Sorry its not embellished enough for you. I am simply relaying an experience I had.

originally posted by: wtbengineer
a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Agreed, the universe(s) is/are a big place. I can't rule out that somebody is visiting somebody else interplanetarily, but I don't believe it has ever happened here. I tend to gravitate toward the Vallee camp, but I have my own specific beliefs about it all. I have my own experiences that have helped to form these beliefs, but by no means have I set out a firm hypothesis for it. I still don't know. And you know what makes this the most difficult to resolve for me personlly? I haven't had any kind of strangeness happen to me at all for a good 20 years!

Well that can be a good thing (to not have regular strangeness).
If you become addicted to it, it will destroy you every time.
I'm down to maybe 1 major "high strangeness per year
and I couldn't be happier".

You should start a thread and share more sometime.. it's hard
to come by another "Vallee engineer type". I've only ever met
a handful.

Kev

a reply to: openminded2011

I don't want embellishment!

Kev