I'm a skeptic, but today I saw a UFO, weird,..

Although I am not a debunker, I am always very skeptical of any sightings, I spend a lot of time looking at YouTube videos sorted by date, and that experience has taught me to be very skeptical of ALL visual evidence. I tend to give much more credence to eye witness testimony rather than optical data, a good story is worth dozens of good images, moving or still shots. So this morning; 2008-04-14 - @12:10:17pm (from the exif data of the first picture.), as I was walking down my driveway to check my mailbox, I saw what seemed to be a kite or windblown scarf, brilliant orange and darker orange in color, it was slowly moving toward me traveling from North to South very slowly, size appeared to be no more than maybe four feet in any direction. I did not observe it intensely because it had a motion as though moving up and down as if tethered by a string from the ground, the speed of the oscillations were approximately three or four cycles per second, the range of motion restrained to about twice it’s physical size. The odd motion had me ready to grab for my pocket Sony camera that I keep with me religiously, but still not enough strangeness to trigger an all out reaction, no need to waste memory card space, I thought. I checked the mail, it had not come yet, when I looked to see where the Kite was located, all the red alarms went off, all your life you hope to see something like this, you rehearse it over and over again in your mind, you know you’ll quickly whip that camera out, turn it on, point and shoot, well, I did pretty good, The object was now abreast of me, it’s path was about 200 feet West of me so it never was directly overhead, it was clear to me that something strange was happening, the "thing" was rising up while still traveling due South, now directly West to my position, any sense of its size was now lost. I grabbed for the camera, got it turned on, as I lifted it up, the LCD screen was completely washed out by the brilliant sunlit sky, I had to approximate the correct direction, the camera is set in bracket mode, it will take a series of three frames, each with a different exposure, one overexposed, one optimized, and one underexposed, usually at least one will be usable, and you can make an HDR image by combining all three together. As I depressed the shutter button, the multi hued Orange "thing", abruptly faded out within one second, an extremely brilliant strangely hued point source of light popped into view slightly to the south of the orange colored object at the same instant, as one dissolved, the bright light appeared. The distance between the two objects was about the size of my fist held at arm’s length. I did capture the light points but they are quite underwhelming compared to the impact of the actual event. The light had an odd purplish blue cast to it a little bit like a welders arc, but strangely different, to my amazement, this small yet powerfully bright light began immediately moving up and away now travelling Southwest in just a second, it paused in its apparent movement and ascension, but then engaged in a series of severe saw tooth type oscillations, all staying within an imaginary box, the size of which I could not guess due to a lack of references pertaining to size and distance. I was taking pictures all the time, there is a delay of several seconds as the three shots are written to the memory card and then it will take another series of three.

The point source light then either dimmed or moved away at an incredibly fast rate, leaving again in a steep vertical climb, with a slight Southwest direction of travel. My initial reaction as it disappeared from sight was that the phenomenon I had just witnessed would have looked very much like the Ricky Sorrels video, if it had been filmed with the same type of camera, under darker conditions, the rapid oscillations did move so fast that I saw the streaking or elongating effect that happens with fast moving very luminous objects with my naked eye. The effect was not as drawing in the air as Linda M. Howe has postulated, but I would say the after image behind the light source was very noticeable, like rapidly waving a glowing stick of incense in the dark. My impression of what it was is mixed, the first manifestation looked like something solid, it moved erratically, but it was apparently physically present. When the point source of light appeared, it is hard to imagine anything moving so erratically could be moving under intelligent control, the motions were just so extreme. Why would such radical motions be part of its operation or function, it does not make sense. The pictures and exif data will all be made freely available in full original untouched condition, but the only thing that can be seen is the points of light, very small and guaranteed not to convince anyone of anything. But the testimony I give is honest and true. I advise everyone who lives in Northern Illinois to watch the skies for the next couple of days or weeks, I always look up, but only today have I ever seen anything so strange, there have been reports recently in Indiana so we may be at the beginning of a UFO wave in the region. It almost seemed like the object sensed that it was about to be imaged and that action triggered the initial transformation, pure conjecture on my part, I have no scientifically valid proof, just my account of the incident, so I shouldn’t make such wild assertions, but the timing was so perfect to avoid being captured on my camera.
I swear everything reported by me in this matter is the truth; I often work to expose UFO hoaxers, and would never actively engage in any similar behavior.

The original digital stills have just been posted to the USENET, (the news groups), in alt.binaries.ufo.files by me RING0

Please post the pics here (use picturebucket or similar), I would like to see these to get a better idea of what you saw.. I could use usenet but it would certainly help this topic along while it is here.

It's funny to read this, as tonight I saw something equally strange in the sky - it looked a little like the light you would get from a strong ground flashlight (like what you get at special events pointing to the sky), however, the movement of it was impossible, as it seemed to be on some kind of repeating path. If you can imagine one of the aforementioned lights moving in a circle, it was like this except when the "light" reached one side of its circle, it immediately appeared at the opposite side of the circle, and repeated.

My girlfriend saw it too, and said she thought it was one of these "lights", but after watching it agreed with me when I said it was impossible, as the light never made a complete circle but instead instantly moved back to its original starting point, to zip in an arc again, and each time slightly different to the last. I don't have a camera here that would have been able to capture it but it might have made an interesting topic if I had.

Would love to see your pics and see if it was anything similar, I've never seen anything like this before!

Originally posted by RING0
When the point source of light appeared, it is hard to imagine anything moving so erratically could be moving under intelligent control, the motions were just so extreme. Why would such radical motions be part of its operation or function, it does not make sense.

As a firm believer of ET visitation to our planet even I can't claim to make sense of the subject other than to know extraterretrial beings are here for purposes as yet unclarified or unknown to me.

The technologies used to reach Earth must be quite exotic and perhaps the movement or percieved motion is part of that function. Also if there are ETs coming to this planet then that means that there is a military conspiracy with violence most likely involved to keep the subject a secret. This thing you saw may have been damaged in its trip here by accident or on purpose and moving erratically for that reason.

Or as you said it did somehow "know" you were trying to image it and it began some sort of counter-measure to avoid being imaged by performing those strange movements.

[edit on 14-4-2008 by Frith]

The technologies used to reach Earth must be quite exotic and perhaps the movement or percieved motion is part of that function. Also if there are ETs coming to this planet then that means that there is a military conspiracy with violence most likely involved to keep the subject a secret. This thing you saw may have been damaged in its trip here by accident or on purpose and moving erratically for that reason.

These sort of sightings are to me, the most interesting.

The key to the above is "perceived motion".

I'm a physicist, and my working assumption is that IF there are any ET's flying here from other solar systems, they must have discovered some actually physically real way of implementing warp drive. And by this, I mean "warp drive" as science would understand it: a new "source term" in Einsteinian gravity beyond the currently known classical stress-energy tensor.

I assume that ETs have to obey the laws of physics as much as we do. Then, IF they have warp drive which engineers the spacetime metric (as do very large masses which create gravity), then there must be optical effects, complex gravitational lensing.

In other words, it may "appear' that some craft or light has suddently "jumped" from one place to another, but in fact the physical thing did not do so, but the curvature of space (and all light will follow it) may have been altered by their hypothetical warp drive to make it APPEAR that way.

There are also redshift/blueshift effects from gravitational fields as well, so color shifts are not unexpected. If you see colorshifts which transition in precisely the same order as a rainbow, e.g. from low to high frequency or back, then that would be even more interesting as that is what one would expect from a monochromatic source passing through a time-dependent metric, e.g. the wavelength of the photons are stretched and compressed.

(Gravitational redshift is an experimentally confirmed phenomenon, but in the Earth's gravity well, the magnitude of the effect is astoundingly small, so we don't see any color shift looking at something below us, versus above us).

and given that we are assuming unknown-to-man physics, there could conceivably be some particle emission/side effects from the operation of the warp drive which make optical emissions.

Thanks for taking the time to tell us about your experience...

Truly bizarre I have not ever read about a shape like you describe of the first object. Great detailed description too, good job

I wish I could look at your photos but I don't know how to access that address you gave?

And to mbkennel, thanks for your post as well about explaining about why we might perceive movements and light color changes.... very interesting! Star to you and the OP

Here are the untouched images, do not expect much, as with most UFO photos, the objects appear more distant and smaller than they did in person. I don't consider any UFO images to be very good evidence, even if I was the one taking them.



Flickr account UFO images

I uploaded them to my Flickr account, there isn't much to see, but the object can be seen in most of them, you have to zoom in quite a bit on most of then to even see them at all. The images were taken in groupings of three, and in numerical order. They are also bracketed, with three different f stops. aligning them to track the lights movement might be possible but camera movement may have occurred during the sequences.

One possibility, I have seen some very odd looking radio controlled hobby planes, which, sufficiently powered (as they are today) can make dramatic and quick movements, especially in the wind.

[edit on 15-4-2008 by mbkennel]

Originally posted by RING0
Here are the untouched images, do not expect much, as with most UFO photos, the objects appear more distant and smaller than they did in person. I don't consider any UFO images to be very good evidence, even if I was the one taking them.



Flickr account UFO images

I uploaded them to my Flickr account, there isn't much to see, but the object can be seen in most of them, you have to zoom in quite a bit on most of then to even see them at all. The images were taken in groupings of three, and in numerical order. They are also bracketed, with three different f stops. aligning them to track the lights movement might be possible but camera movement may have occurred during the sequences.

Maybe I'm blind, but I zoomed in quite a bit and still don't see anything.

too small to determine anything from the pictures.
i don't think enlargement and sharpening the images would herald any rewards.
i'm still waiting for my first UFO sighting. maybe i should pray to the almighty Yahweh for a sighting.

I looked at the pics. But I don't see anything.

I saw a tiny tiny tiny white dot in 2 of the numerous pictures...

And as someone above said, it's not really worth enlarging it's just too small. But thanks for posting the photos so we could all see them.

yes, thanks for posting the pictures. I squinted so much my eye muscles are sore, but i did see the anomalous object in most of them, although it looks more like a dark speck than a glowing orb. also, no light trails.