Castle AFB and Merced, California

i no longer live in the area but i went to high school in merced, california, about 8 miles from atwater, where castle air force base was until it was closed down in 1995. as a kid in the 80s i heard many stories of weird things in the sky, and i heard even more as a high school student in the 90s. the sightings were usually attributed to what we thought was crazy technology at the base.

last weekend i came down to the area again to visit an old friend of mine. after a wonderful bbq, we sat around and talked over beers on an extremely warm night. two sips into his beer my friend says:

"so i am sure you have heard about all the ufo activity around here lately."

and i said i hadn't heard anything like that, and i asked him what he meant. he said that the ufo sightings had become much, much more common in the last year and especially the last few months. he said he knew people who claimed to see things every night lately.

i have personally had one sighting of something in the sky in 2003, eight years after the base closed. back then i had described to my friend what i had seen, and last weekend he told me that others were seeing something in the merced skies that sounded like what i had seen. not only that but somebody had put a video of it on youtube. here is that:



when i saw that video i could not believe it. the video is from earlier this year but it looks just like what i had seen eight years before.

my friend also said he had heard of crazy sightings, things like 40-50 of these things in the sky at once. i expressed my disbelief, "yeah right", but he said somebody had actually caught footage of something similar in the sky before, in 2007 and it was in MERCED!

*Mod Note - Video contains graphic language*



my own mom (who still lives in the area) said that she has heard about the ufos but she hasn't seen anything. she said that what she heard was that the ufos always seemed to accompany planes with trails! "really?, wow."
and so i looked on youtube and, sure enough there is this



and this



both videos from merced and both show unusual things in the sky along with a plane and a trail.

my friend stressed to me that he felt like he was hearing stories of sightings from everyone lately, the cashier at the store, people at his work, even his son's friend's dad had a story to relate recently. again, he said people were seeing something every day. it made me wish i had more time in merced to watch the sky. my wife and i had sore necks when we went to sleep the night of the bbq because we all stared up all night while we talked. unfortunately we didn't get to see anything that night.

but my youtube search did yield something from earlier this month:



so i am wondering if anyone on ats has heard of any weird things about merced or the castle afb in atwater. of course i did an ats search before i made this post and i couldn't find any mention of castle, and, at least around those parts, there is some ufo folklore and it's often attributed to the base.

i thank you for reading and i am really hoping i hear from somebody who has a great ufo story about the merced area.

Interesting and well thought out post OP S&F for you!

thank you! star to you for your impeccable taste!

i meant to say in my post that there is some language in one of the videos that some people might find questionable and there is some music in another that i found questionable.

reply to post by godWhisperer


My gf told me that she and her sisters saw random lights every now and then a couple years back...but that was by the airport near UC Merced so it could have been conventional aircraft but since they couldn't ID the object it was technically a "ufo." I'll ask her if her sisters have seen any more random things up there as they all still live there.

reply to post by Daedalus24


i would love to hear if she, or any of her friends, are seeing any more activity lately. the uc is out right by the lake and i years back had heard of sightings above the lake.

i know that there has been an increase in sightings everywhere but i am captivated by this alleged surge in merced because i grew up there.

reply to post by godWhisperer
GW, Thats some off the best footage i have ever seen well done for posting this very interesting footage, I used to night sky watch routinely till recently. Now this thread has motivated me to put my video camera back on the charger and start a renewed "campaign" of searching the night sky, Well done, S&F...

reply to post by foxhoundone


i was impressed, too! when my friend started talking about it i was really leery because it's hard for me to believe that all this stuff was happening in my old home town (and i didn't even read anything about it on ats)! but the videos were impressive to me and i was eager to hear what some ats people thought.