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An evening sighting I had a number of years ago.

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111uminate

One and None
I couldn't resist the gravity of this section of the forums, so my first post will be made here! After reading through the many experiences people have shared here, I thought I would follow suit regarding a sighting I had about eight years ago. I have regaled many with this story throughout the years, but it was predominantly in jest, and in passing. I never felt the impetus to mention some of the finer details regarding it, due in part to my own alienation (Was that a pun?) and reluctance. Needless to say, those finer details have remained in memory. I suppose I never had a fitting outlet for it, until now. I've had an interest in the subject for as long as I can remember, but I've never delved into the subject with like-minded individuals, and others who have had experiences. With that said, I'll carry on.

Time: Evening, approximately 6PM.
Duration: Approximately two hours.
Location: Hanover Pennsylvania, residential area.

Description:
As far as I can remember it must have been a clear night, because visibility was not a problem at all. Cloud cover was minimal, and I could see stars quite easily all the way up to the visible horizon. I was still in Highschool at the time, and I had been outside hanging out with a few people waiting for someone else to come over. We were in a small group chatting outside of my house, and whenever I'm outside during the night I'm always looking up at the stars whenever I have a moment to. I had been looking up frequently during our conversation, namely looking in the direction of Orion. That's when I noticed it. It was much too bright to be a star, and after watching it for a few minutes I noticed it wasn't stationary either. Now, just let it be known that I'm aware of the tricks of light that can be played upon the eye while staring at a point of light with a dark background. This wasn't the case, as it was later confirmed to be moving by my friends there with me.

After it struck me that this was something odd, I pointed it out to everyone. I honestly couldn't guess it's distance, but I do know it was high up in the sky, or not very big, though bright. Once we all acknowledged it, and came to an agreement that it wasn't something strange and we couldn't point out what it may be, we decided to try getting closer to it, and for the most part just began walking in it's direction. Where I lived at the time, there was a relatively large (A few football fields worth) section of forest behind my house that ran perpendicular to that part of the neighborhood. We ended up trekking back there along a path, and without the distraction of street lights the object became much more clear, as well as it's maneuvers. The town I lived in was in a valley, so within eye-sight you could see a small chain of mountain ranges along the horizon, and the object was much closer than that. It was directly above the town, though very high up, and not along the tree line of the forest we were in or anything like that.

So, we stood there together in collective amazement all relegated by the fact that we did not know what this thing was, and realized that we had not seen anything like it before. We became noisy after we saw it begin to do these .. corkscrew maneuvers. It was similar to that of a falling leaf, only it was making circles in a downward spiral type fashion. The circles it made were horizontal, because I could notice that it dimmed slightly due to gaining slight distance on us, so it would sort of fade out and back in again as it made the circles. It would do this several times, over and over again while rapidly descending. It was truly uncanny, and impossible for a conventional aircraft to pull off. After it would finish one of these corkscrews, it would slowly trickle back upward to gain elevation then start it all over again.

After our excitement peaked, I told my younger brother who was with us at the time to run back to the house and grab my binoculars. After a little hesitation to leave, he agreed and left. The rest of us stood there in awe watching this thing, and speaking for myself I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At that point I had been vaguely interested in the UFO subject, and had a firm passion for space related topics, but I had never thought I would ever see one. We had been watching for another fifteen or twenty minutes, then my brother finally returned with my binoculars. What I saw suspended any disbelief and enflamed my sense of wonder ..

Without the aid of binoculars, the object appeared to be a bright point of light, or like an orb; spherical in shape, surrounded by a glow. After finding it in the binoculars, I soon realized that it was actually rapidly changing luminosity. We weren't able to discern that from the distance between us and the object, but through them it appeared to be blinking very very fast. It still retained that glowing orb shape, and as for a form of structure I really couldn't make anything out aside from the fact that it was intensely more bright at it's center. The blinking it displayed was much faster than any I had seen before on a conventional aircraft, and it seemed to have one solid color of white. I didn't notice any other lights aside from this.

We watched it for another half hour to forty-five minutes, then suddenly it blinked out and disappeared. No shooting off into the distance or anything like that, but it literally just lost it's light intensity and was no longer visible. For all we know it still could have been there and someone had forgotten to turn their lights off. After coming down from our emotional high, we left the wooded area and returned home. Since then no one has really spoke about it, and I wonder if they even remember, but I know for certain that I do.

What it wasn't:
-Flare: Though flares change in luminosity, they don't maneuver about the sky changing elevation.
-Conventional craft: At least as far as we know. It certainly wasn't an airplane since it remained in a hover, climbing repeatedly. Possibly a helicopter, but I would have expected it to pull one corkscrew maneuver then end up in flames on the ground.
-Meteor: It remained in the sky for nearly two hours. Cosmic debris of any kind entering the atmosphere doesn't do that.

What it could have been:
-Ball lightening: While to my knowledge I have never seen this phenomena before, and the documentation for it is a little hazy, I won't rule out the possibility. It certainly was a ball of light.
-Earth lights: Quake activity in that area is fairly non-existent, but I won't deny that there is plenty of rock and minor seismic activity certainly is possible.
-Secret aircraft: There were no airforce bases in the immediate area, but that doesn't rule it out as being something we haven't heard about yet.
-Little green men: While I don't like the term, I'll use it in a purely self-sarcastic way. I won't rule out the possibility it could have been something not from here.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Certainly feels good to get that out in a somewhat coherent way. If you've got any questions I'll gladly answer what I can.
 
This "corkscrew" maneuvre you talk about, would it look like this ? <object width="425" height="344">
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</param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GrYMKy4P00k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
 
Yes! Exactly that! I was going to mention that footage in my initial reply. Thank you for making that comparison. I had remembered that footage was taken somewhere in Nevada, presumably near Area 51 but I didn't know where to begin in locating it on the net. Thank you immensely for finding it. I didn't want to digress in my description in mentioning the footage if I couldn't find it, but you are indeed correct. What I saw that night resembled those maneuvers very much, particularly the dimming due to distance change when it makes the circles.

Now, that begs a question. Could it indeed have been something experimental, given that footage was taken so close to the base? That of course depends upon your interpretation of what goes on at the base; test aircraft, or bonified alien craft.

Edit: Also interesting to note that footage was taken near a mountain range. The object I saw was quite a distance away from the mountains in that area, and more directly over the town, but there were mountains visible in the general topography.
 
Glad to be of assistance. These maneuvres have been documented since the 1940s. Have a look at:


1/ e-Book "The UFO Evidence" (1964) by Richard Hall Statistics and analyses of consistent physical appearance, maneuvers, flight characteristics, recurrent concentrations. section_12

2/ book "Unconventional Flying Objects" by Paul Hill (I summarize some of it in my page Quick Technical Overview under point #10)

3/ McCampbell's Ufology-Chapter 7
 
I thank you again. This bit from "The UFO Evidence" is particularly interesting:

b. Pendulum/Falling Leaf Motion
A curious, but fairly common, flight characteristic of UFOs is a pendulum-like motion (swaying back and forth) during hovering, slow climb, or descent. Witnesses frequently have compared this to the gyrations of a falling leaf.


Incredible. That's nearly exactly what I described. The only corroborative case I knew of was that piece of footage where the maneuvers seemed highly similar, but I suppose delving into the body of reports will yield some findings as well.
 
Apologies for the late reply, just returned home from work. After pinpointing where the mountains were along the horizon, I've concluded that it would be North-East. From my viewpoint, it was aligned perfectly with them, only not near them, but over the town itself. It didn't seem to be travelling either, but remained in a hover for the period of time it was visible until it abruptly "blinked out". I certainly wish I could have seen it as it appeared, because I wonder if it would have "blinked in" or simply traveled to the location it ended up in. But, where it was in the sky would be North-East on a compass. Hope that answers your question.
 
OK, I was trying to see if your UFO sightings might have occured over lake Marburg (~2 miles east of Hanover -- look it up on GoogleMaps).

You see, I have developed this theory that low-altitude "treetops level" UFO sightings occur near water (lakes, rivers, reservoirs etc). I have looked up over a UFO 1000 reports over the past 1.5 year, from USA to S.America to Africa to Australia. And it ties into some other ideas of mine, regarding occupants ...
 
OK, I was trying to see if your UFO sightings might have occured over lake Marburg (~2 miles east of Hanover -- look it up on GoogleMaps).

You see, I have developed this theory that low-altitude "treetops level" UFO sightings occur near water (lakes, rivers, reservoirs etc). I have looked up over a UFO 1000 reports over the past 1.5 year, from USA to S.America to Africa to Australia. And it ties into some other ideas of mine, regarding occupants ...

Of all the cases youve looked at, what sort of numbers are we talking here? As far as % that are near water?

I think its a very good chance that non-humans have bases in oceans and other large bodies of water. Based on reports of a type of 'force-field' around the craft as it enters or exits water, resulting in the water not actually touching the craft, I believe this would aid in travelling to great depths and pressures.

Not to mention there is some DEEP DEEP water out there and honestly, anything could be down there.
 
OK, I was trying to see if your UFO sightings might have occured over lake Marburg (~2 miles east of Hanover -- look it up on GoogleMaps).

You see, I have developed this theory that low-altitude "treetops level" UFO sightings occur near water (lakes, rivers, reservoirs etc). I have looked up over a UFO 1000 reports over the past 1.5 year, from USA to S.America to Africa to Australia. And it ties into some other ideas of mine, regarding occupants ...

Interesting indeed. Yeah, Marburg is fairly close to where I was, and if I had to wager a guess, I would say the object was within 1 mile, at least of the lake. It wasn't over it, but it certainly was considerably close considering it was in a North-East position, in the direction of the lake. Hmm .. Another facet of it I haven't considered before. I've never really tried, oddly enough to pick apart the experience in terms of geographical location. For the most part I think I'm still to this day enveloped in precisely what I saw, and things like speculation and research haven't necessarily come until this point.

Certainly you're aware of the Catalina Island cases off the coast of California? Quite a breadth of cases there regarding sightings and a body of water.
 
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