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The first UFO sighting recounted here still ranks as the most baffling physical phenomenon I have ever observed.
While working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia in the early to mid-1970s, I was staying in a house at 1962 Lewis Mountain Road.
One evening, after dark, while walking down the road south towards the University of Virginia campus, I saw a very bright, white light streak across the sky from my left to right (east to west.) By "streak" I mean very rapidly moving; not that the light source itself was stretched out. There was no tail, and no trail. It did not appear to the naked eye as having any dimensions; imagine a bright light bulb at several hundred feet.
The road was residential and there were many large trees in the neighborhood. I could see a large chunk of open sky - 90 degrees worth, say - but not the earth-sky horizon in any direction. Still, extrapolating the movement I saw above the trees indicated a travel time from horizon to horizon of probably less than 2 seconds. It was fast.
This speed presents the first problem. If the object were high up in the atmosphere the speed would have to be fantastically great, and even more so if it were out of the atmosphere. Try to imagine a satellite, airplane or even a meteor going from horizon to horizon in 2 seconds.
If the object were down lower, say hundreds of feet above the treetops, the speed would not be so inconceivable - but it would still be quite baffling. Presuming it were right above the trees, the object had to be traveling 100 mph, or so.
And if that were the case, there would be other difficulties - in particular, sound. I surely would have heard something. There was nothing, no swish or rumble - not to mention sonic boom - associated with it.
However - and this is where it goes from inexplicable to absolutely weird - a couple of seconds after the light had disappeared to my right, there was a loud, horrendous squawk in that direction as if from some monstrous bird. I had never heard anything like it. (For no good reason, I always think "pterodactyl".) Keep in mind, too, that it was nighttime, when birds are normally quiet.
If you paid close attention to the numbers you noticed that the location of the squawk and the location of the bright light do not necessarily jibe. That was my impression at the time, that the light was far gone by the time I heard the squawk. Still the coincidence of direction and timing within a second or 2 was stupefying.
We're not through yet. Just in case I got some idea I was imagining things, or had had a bizarre dream, the whole thing happened again. I didn't record any observations at the time, but I believe it was a few days later - less than a week, I think.
This second time I was walking home from campus - that is, northward - along the same road. When I was within a few hundred feet of where it happened the first time, a bright light like the first came streaking across the sky. This time it was from my right to left - meaning east to west, as before.
(Over the years, some uncertainty has crept in. My memory says that something was the opposite the 2nd time around, and I believe I was walking the opposite direction, north. Maybe I was walking the same direction, but the light streaked from west to east. I also wonder if my memory introduced this oppositeness at some later date and maybe nothing was different the 2nd time.)
Just like you are wondering right now, I hardly had time to be astonished before wondering, "Will I hear that insane squawk again?" Not to keep you in suspense any longer, the answer is...
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YES!!! - the same crazy, loud squawk came from somewhere to my left, a second or so after the light had passed out of sight that way.
Your best guess is probably that it was a local phenomenon - a prank by some college kids. I considered that carefully at the time and could find absolutely no evidence for it. There was no sound of a firing or launching. There was no wire for guiding the light. (There were no tall buildings in the area, only single-family houses.) There was no bright object, such as an arrow with a light attached, falling to the ground hundreds of feet away.
I was - and still am - at a complete, total, absolute, 100% loss for even the most far-fetched explanation.
UFO #1 summary:
What: streaking bright, white light, plus squawk.
When: early-mid 1970s, spring or late winter. Observed twice.
Where: Charlottesville, Virginia. Lewis Mountain Road.
The second UFO turned out to be an identified - but still unexplained - flying object.
I was walking (I've done a lot of walking) towards downtown Philadelphia - what they call Center City - from the west. I don't remember which street I was using. I feel like it wasn't Market Street, my usual route, but possibly Arch or another of the streets which run parallel to Market to the north of it. Again, this was the early 1970s.
I saw a small white thing fall from the sky. I think the day was partly cloudy. In any case, I'm sure that at the time I had scanned the skies and determined positively that there were no aircraft of any sort visible in any direction.
The thing smashed to the sidewalk about a half or 3/4 of a block ahead of me. I remember seeing no one else in the vicinity. (That was slightly eerie.)
I arrived at the crash site.
It was a styrofoam coffee cup. It had landed on its bottom, and it was smashed and telescoped by the impact. There was a brown liquid surrounding the smashed cup, probably enough to have filled the cup about a quarter full.
If that's not the greatest UFO story you ever heard, let me reiterate that there were no aircraft in the area. I had the cup in my sight when it was higher than the nearest buildings, which were about 4 stories tall. (I remember them as being old and abandoned-looking. There were no residential buildings in the area.) I saw it zooming straight down; there was no hint of an arc from being launched from the ground or a building. (There would be problems with that explanation, anyway, if the cup had no lid. I don't remember a lid, but, unfortunately, at this point I can't swear it didn't have a lid.)
Has anyone ever seen an ordinary, familiar object fall from the sky?
UFO #2 summary:
What: styrofoam coffee cup falling out of the sky. No aircraft
in the area.
When: early 1970s, probably fall.
Where: Philadelphia, between the river and center city.
The last phenomenon I'll describe actually was the 1st chronologically. There is nothing about it that suggests intelligence, but it was a heart-thumping, once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It happened probably in the late 1960s near the house I grew up in Hebbville, near Woodlawn in Baltimore County, Maryland. I was riding bikes with my younger neighbor Norville Schisler at the end of Clays Lane where it meets Rolling Road. His house was directly across Rolling Road from the end of Clays Lane. The area was rural then.
I was facing up Clays Lane towards his house and he was facing down towards mine. All of a sudden I saw a fiery mass fall out of the sky, apparently into the field directly behind Norville's house. (They have since shifted Clays Lane to the right, so the Schisler house is no longer directly across. And you were ready to yell "Gotcha!") I saw maybe the last 1.5 or 2 seconds of the fall. I couldn't stammer out anything quickly enough to get Norville to turn and look. He didn't see it.
As opposed to UFO #1, which was a bright point of white light, this had yellow-orange flames and sparks trailing it. Also, it just fell. It didn't streak to the ground at some incredible speed, like I always envisioned meteors would do. Thinking about it, I guess even meteors would reach a mundane terminal velocity. (I've never researched what a nearby, falling meteor looks like.)
The obvious question is how do I know where it fell, since the eyes cannot apply parallax to anything over 50 feet away. Well, I can't be sure, but it just seemed like the flames and sparks were too clearly visible to be something miles away.
I was so sure that it had fallen into the field a few hundred feet behind Norville's house that I spent a lot of time the next day searching for it. If Norville wasn't completely sure he could believe me when it happened, he knew I wouldn't go to such lengths to perpetuate a hoax scouring the field the next day.
We never found a trace.
UFO #3 summary:
What: fiery mass falling into field.
When: late 1960s.
Where: Hebbville, near Woodlawn in Baltimore County, Maryland.
In the summer of 1996, I spent two months at a friend's house in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The town was Thornton. The road was Mill Brook Road. This is the road where the famous alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill took place on September 19 1961.
You'll never believe what happened.
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