Possible sighting in Schaumburg, Illinois?

Hi all,

I thought I would go out on a limb here, at the risk of being laughed at, and tell you about an alleged 'sighting' I had last year. Now, bear in mind that while I am fascinated by UFOlogy, the paranormal,cryptozoology etc etc, i'm very much a 'hands on' kinda guy, and that I have to experirnce things first hand. I know there are those out there who are only trying to decieve others, and I 110% assure i'm not one of them. I've not really said too much about it, with the exception of a few close friends, but I would really like to know if anyone here could shed any light on my account, as it's just baffling.

Anyhoo, myself and my girlfriend were out in Schaumburg a while ago, the 14th June, 2008,to be exact. We had been out for sushi and were heading to the movie theater to go check out the new Indiana Jones movie. We decided that we would go to the theater at the ‘Streets of Woodfield’, by Woodfield Mall. It had been pretty dark and rainy that afternoon, and was threatening a thunderstorm any moment. We parked up in the car lot and made our way down to the street. As we came out at street level, there was a pretty stunning rainbow. My girlfriend wanted to take a picture of it, as she had her camera with her. While she was digging around in her bag, I noticed something in the sky that was a little unusual looking. Now, Schaumburg isn’t too far away from O’Hare, so we’re used to planes flying around all the time up that way, but this moved differently. It was very erratic. It appeared to be cylindrical and have some kind of light on one end. My girlfriend snapped a picture of the rainbow and I pointed out the object to her. She gave me the camera and I snapped a couple of frames. It was relatively small, so trying to see it with the camera wasn’t easy so I had to guess and basically ‘point and click’. Here are the pictures:

Picture one, the rainbow, object really isn’t too visible in this frame:

i253.photobucket.com...

Here is a zoom of the picture, the object is becoming visible just below center of the frame:

i253.photobucket.com...

Another zoom, it’s a little more clearly defined:

i253.photobucket.com...

And this zoom, I darkened the contrast a little, so you can see it a little better:

i253.photobucket.com...

I really don’t know what to make of it. These pictures have not been tampered with in any way, other than cropping and zooming, and the contrast adjustment on the last one there. I do have an interest in this subject, but think of myself as a skeptic for the most part, but this honestly left me stumped.

Hopefully the pictures load ok.

It’s quite amusing, as a week after I took this, my friends in the UK (where I am from originally) were telling me there were UFO stories in the news, and then my mom told me too! Weird! Lol!

Let me know what your thoughts are!

Genus

Greetings from Champaign!

That is an interesting photo. Do you think it could have been a water droplet on the lens?

How long was it visible?

I don't remember when the big O'Hare sightings were but it seems like they were during a storm/fog too.

Interesting!

Thanks for posting. Interesting story but before I comment further have you just posted one picture that your other half took of the rainbow and provided zoomed images? You say that you took the camera and snapped the object yourself. If you could also provide these pictures it would give us more insight into it's movement etc.

*edit* I can see that the first picture is different but it doesn't seem to show the UFO.

[edit on 13-4-2009 by RE2505]

Originally posted by emsed1
Greetings from Champaign!

That is an interesting photo. Do you think it could have been a water droplet on the lens?

How long was it visible?

I don't remember when the big O'Hare sightings were but it seems like they were during a storm/fog too.

Interesting!

Hello Champaign!

Well, the thing is, I actually saw this object, which is why I grabbed the camera from her and snapped some shots. Becuse it was'nt that big (to the naked eye) it was nigh on impossible seeing it on the display on the camera, so I just aimed in the general direction and hoped for the best. The way it moved was just bizarre. It would move in a straight line, then stop, then move in a stright line in another direction, then stop and so on. I watched it for a couple of minutes until the distance just made it virtually disappear.

It looks like you may have not been the only witnesses. This is from the MUFON database on 6/14/2008:

(I added some spacing so it's easier to read but the text is unchanged)

My neighbor (girlfriend) and i were sitting in Indian Boundary park in Chicago (around Lunt and Western) on city's north side. I've lived here 30 years, seen countless planes pass overhead going toward or coming from O'hare airport perhaps 10 miles to the west. Ive seen birds, ballons, kites, etc.

Anyway, we were facing north, sitting on a bench, sun sort of behind us about 10 or 10:30 in the morning. Had a clear view of the sky as the park is open all around. Planes went by under a very bright, glaring cloud cover, appeared small so clouds were pretty high up. It was so bright and hazy I put my sunglasses on over my distance glasses as i often do.

Suddenly a white disc , brighter than the clouds and bright enough to be seen clearly came as it were from off to our 'left' (west) moving steadily east with a slight wavy motion but on a constant course. Moved faster than planes at that altitude had earlier. It seemed to be immersed inside the haze not on the cloud surface, like an object just inside the lower, hazy part of the clopud cover.

About fifteen seconds in our view it came overhead, slowed, then all at once went vertically straight up inside the cloud cover, calculating the size of clouds by comparison to your average airliner I'd say it shot up hundreds of feet in a second or two, made a loop and came back down to about the same level, then moved steadily off toward the east.

Whole thing took about 30- 40 seconds. It began to move behind tree branches blocking our view so I jumped up and stood to watch it. As it moved east inside the cloud cover it kept its shape and did not seem to grow smaller as it hadnt traveled that far, and eventually vanished in the haze.

No way is was an aircraft headlight. Weird thing was that as it was moving away still bright enough to be seen even inside the brilliant cloudy haze I could make out what must have been huge v-shaped 'wings" inside the circle of light. It reminded me of one of those v-shaped electric guitars you see. Just two wings, though I couldnt make out the point at which they jopined.

They were clearly solid objects imbeded inside the circle of light, almost well concealed, but I could make it cout for about 8-10 seconds. i had on good quality sunglasses. My friend (age 55) was quite stunned, looking at me and asking what was that? over and over, though she had no sunglasses on and didnt see the wings. I was rather stunned too.

I ran a number of ideas through my mind but was and still am certain the object being brighter than the sunny clouds had to be really powerfully illuminated ( more of a matte finish glow, not like a street lamp) and was self guided. I've waited until now to think about reporting it. I searched for similar sightings on the Web. Found only a few regarding circles of light in mexico. But this was during the day.

An airline at that distance would have been smaller than the circle of light and wouldnt have done a huge loop. All I can say is that those wings were cloaked as it were inside the light as if it were a camoflage or something, they remained positioned inside the circle as it moved off and vanished in the haze more or less off to our 'right' i.e.it did not travel as far as the horizon.

Originally posted by RE2505
Thanks for posting. Interesting story but before I comment further have you just posted one picture that your other half took of the rainbow and provided zoomed images? You say that you took the camera and snapped the object yourself. If you could also provide these pictures it would give us more insight into it's movement etc.

*edit* I can see that the first picture is different but it doesn't seem to show the UFO.

[edit on 13-4-2009 by RE2505]

Hi RE2505,

Basically, she took just one of the rainbow, then I took the camera off her and took one or two. Then, I just zoomed and cropped to isolate the object as best I could. Here are two 'full screen' pics:

i253.photobucket.com... (already posted this one in the OP)

i253.photobucket.com...

I have a feeling that the zooms were from the second link there. It's been a while, so I honestly can't remember. I may have one more picture on my comp at home, but it's just another shot of the street.

Originally posted by emsed1
It looks like you may have not been the only witnesses. This is from the MUFON database on 6/14/2008:

(I added some spacing so it's easier to read but the text is unchanged)

Interesting! great find Emsed!

I guess one of the good things I had working in my favor was that the sun was behind me, so I could watch this thing without blinding myself, then with having the dark clouds overhead, it made the 'light' even more visible.

I'm probably just getting excited over a kids helium foil balloon that got away, but still, you never know.

Originally posted by Genus_Unknown

Interesting! great find Emsed!

I guess one of the good things I had working in my favor was that the sun was behind me, so I could watch this thing without blinding myself, then with having the dark clouds overhead, it made the 'light' even more visible.

I'm probably just getting excited over a kids helium foil balloon that got away, but still, you never know.

Hey at least it's *something* to be excited about in this state. Watching our governors getting sent to prison is getting pretty old and boring! :-)