Experience of a UGO

[Soupie]

This post is a bit of an experiment based on a discussion in another Paracast Forum thread.

When I was a teenager, I encountered an object that I couldn't identify. However, within days, I was able to identify the object. The object was man-made. My idea for this thread is that I will describe as best I can my initial experience, and if you'd like, you can attempt to identify the object I encountered. After a few days, depending on participation, I will reveal the identity of what I had encountered.

It was mid summer in the Eastern United States. The year was approx 1995. I was leaving a friend's house at approx 1 a.m. I was approx 16 years old. My friend's father was a pastor. They lived in a house a few hundred feet from their church. Adjacent to the house and church was a pavilion. All three were on the side of a small mountain in the woods. The pavilion sat in a small, leveled clearing in the woods.

My car was parked in the church parking lot. I would guess the temperature was between 80 and 90 degrees. It was a calm, clear night. As I walked to my car, the presence of a large object sitting in the clearing came to my attention. As it was it 1 a.m. it was dark out. Thus, I couldn't clearly see the object. It appeared, through the trees and the dark, to be shaped like a large egg. I would say it was about the size of a car, but like an egg, it was sitting vertically, rather than horizontally.

I can't recall if I was terrified or not, but I was certainly in an alert state of being. I stood and looked at it for approximately one minute, I didn't feel threatened, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I was looking at. The thought of it being a UFO crossed my mind. (Although in this case it would be an unidentified grounded object.) I literally recall thinking: Am I looking at a UFO?

This was before the era of cell phones. Regardless, the idea of taking a picture never crossed my mind. I also didn't consider approaching it to get a better look. Oddly, I didn't consider going back to my friend's house either.

The object was glowing softly. I'm not sure what color the glow was, but I think it was red. Also, the object emitted a (loud?), steady hissing sound.

After a few moments, I calmly walked to my car, got in, and drove off. I was able to see the object through the trees throughout this process. At the time, I honestly could not identify the object, and couldn't rule out the possibility that I had witnessed a UFO.

Does anyone care to hazard a guess as to what the object was?

(Disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that all UFO sightings have a terrestrial, man-made explanation.)

 

[Soupie]

Ok, no takers. Bummer. In the event that a few people read this, pondered what it might be, and were stumped, here you go: it was a kiln.

Apparently there was a church camp in progress and making pottery was one of the activities. The kiln was not typically there. And it wasn't there for long. I'm not sure if it was a portable kiln or they simply had the means to move any old kiln around.

Again, I'm not suggesting all UFO sightings have mundane answers, but one wonders how many UFO and paranormal experiences are the result of people experiencing the mundane at unexpected times in unexpected places.

 

[Randall]

Ok, no takers. Bummer. In the event that a few people read this, pondered what it might be, and were stumped, here you go: it was a kiln.

Apparently there was a church camp in progress and making pottery was one of the activities. The kiln was not typically there. And it wasn't there for long. I'm not sure if it was a portable kiln or they simply had the means to move any old kiln around.

Again, I'm not suggesting all UFO sightings have mundane answers, but one wonders how many UFO and paranormal experiences are the result of people experiencing the mundane at unexpected times in unexpected places.

I think you have an excellent point. A brief observation at some distance of something out of place can seem highly unusual and lead to one to speculate on "extreme possibilities". Unless there is some definitive evidence from the observation that whatever it is cannot be reasonably explained by anything other than some kind of UFO ( alien craft ), then it's not reasonable to jump to that conclusion. On that note however, I would also like to add that in my experience talking with people over the years about their experiences, the stereotypical portrayal of witnesses as uninformed gullible wishful thinkers who immediately jump to the conclusion, "OMG aliens!" is nothing but inflammatory mockery on the part of a certain brand of skeptics.

 

[Polterwurst]

Ok, no takers. Bummer. In the event that a few people read this, pondered what it might be, and were stumped, here you go: it was a kiln.

Apparently there was a church camp in progress and making pottery was one of the activities. The kiln was not typically there. And it wasn't there for long. I'm not sure if it was a portable kiln or they simply had the means to move any old kiln around.

Again, I'm not suggesting all UFO sightings have mundane answers, but one wonders how many UFO and paranormal experiences are the result of people experiencing the mundane at unexpected times in unexpected places.

I hadn't even seen the thread before today. But I wouldn't have been able to idenify it either, never heard of a portable kiln let alone seen one.
When you say you left the scene calmly, doesn't that imply that at least subconsciously you were convinced that this thing was not really something unexplainable? I imagine the glow you percieved would have been akin to that of a fireplace, not steady but more like flickering etc., and the hissing sound would not have been too mechanical or "unnatural". Otherwise I'd think you would have either tried to get a closer look or get back to your friends' house to ask them what this might be?

 

[Soupie]

I walked calmly to the car, but emotionally I was confused/confounded and in a state of high alertness.

As far as speculating whether my behaviors would have been different if it was a real alien or advanced human craft... I think that's tricky.

The bottom line is that while I knew this was a physical object, I had no idea what it might be (at 1 am) and I strongly considered the possibility that it might be a UFO. I mean, I had no other explanation for what it might be and it certainly had the characteristics of a landed craft.

What this teaches me is that when judging whether a reported experience is real or not, we have to be careful basing on people's reactions. People react in all different ways to UFO sightings.