Yes, it was. Well, can we go a little further, then?
I was thinking if the "bathtub UFO" at the time, but yes that's the classical line for what I was thinking.
Perhaps some descriptions are accurate, but after listening to many of Wendy O'Connors Faded Discs' witness reports & interviews I am very struck by their inability to find proper words to describe what they have seen. They almost seem befuddled trying to find words for that which they just can't explain.
If you would indulge me - one last personal story about hallucination. Once I was in a really bad car accident where my brother was driving and he fell asleep at the wheel (while we were listening to an album called Too Much Sleep - that's the obligatory synchonstic part of the story). His foot was heavy on the accelerator as we sailed through an intersection, just missing two cars going in opposite directions. I screamed about twenty feet before we were about to hit the ramp to someone's driveway. In front of us was a giant cube van parked beside a house.
When I screamed he woke up and slammed the breaks just feet before the driveway. Our little Chevette leapt into the air and hit the ashphalt about to crash into the back of the cube van. My brain could not accept what was happening so in the 1.5-2 seconds before the impact I experienced this lengthy surreal narrative where our car flew up into the sky, over the van, the trees in the backyard and then we were flying in the Chevette over the park behind the house. We continued over the neighbourhood block, the stars overhead - it was enchanting and with grace we touched down in our driveway. In the next instant I was back in the vehicle hurtling towards the back of the van. I heard my brain tell me, "Ok, we're going to crash. It's going to be bad but you're both going to be okay, don't worry." And then, mass, rollicking destruction, the crash of metal on metal, broken glass and sudden stillness.
Those were the days of seatbelts being optional, but when we got in the car that night to go home from late work shifts, I put on mine and he reciprocated. If not for that, death would have been certain. But we both walked away from that accident uninjured. The vehicle was a write off. My teenage brother did not speak to anyone for a week.
The point of my story. In moments of high excitement, where the brain can not comprehend what we are actually seeing, we don't need aliens to control our minds. Our minds just make stuff up right on the spot. Like a good computer it sorts through past experience and gives us an altered, albeit possible, reality to experience as far as the unconscious is concerned. Our brains are not being deceived, or even faulty. They are just trying to help us out when the chips are down. It's what it does.
ive had an experience [singular] of 'slow motion of time' at high speed, around 120mph, i was driving early morning, tina turner belting out steamy windows, i was on a lap [fast lap] of the TT course, approaching a bend, not a brutal bend, a long sweeping bend between 2 fast straights, road was around 35/40ft wide, double white separating the 2 traffic flows.
as i entered i was as close to the kerb on my side of the carriageway as possible, 'straightening out' the bend as much as possible, and i had eased off the accelerator on the approach to the bend, and as i floored the accelerator again to get the grip and drive through the corner, at the same time chopping the nose of the bonnet across my side of the road to have one wheel straddling the centre white line's, to allow me to keep my foot flat to the floor, drive thru and comfortably handle the drift back out to the kerb on exiting the bend.
well feck me just as i was straddling the line and committed, the nose of a purple ford sierra pinching some white line, coming from the opposite direction appeared, and he was moving aswell having had a run down the straight approaching from his side, he must have shit himself, in yanking back off the whitelines i got into a tank slapper the front wheel hit the kerb and thru the car over completely to and in the opposite carriageway, and i exited the bend on the opposite side of the road still well in excess of 110 mph, it must of happened so feckin quick in reality, the only reason im alive is because time went into slow motion and even tho i got well out of shape, i was still in control, sure i was lucky there were no other cars behind him, but i drove the car out of that tank slapper, with my wing mirror getting bashed by undergrowth from the far hedge, and hearing the bodywork getting hit by over-hanging hedge plants as i got the car straightened out, only after i was out the other side of the bend and safe did my legs go, its a surreal experience having the time to think, and decision make, when in reality everything happens in seconds, it was like i viewed from outside in slow mo, yet i was hard on the brakes, off the brakes, flattened the accelerator again, just instinct i guess, and reacting to wherever the nose of the bonnet was pointing, being in a powerful front wheel drive car, having full rally spec suspension and shocks, and plain dumb luck also helped.
edit,
when i think back to my 20s [bikes] and my 30s [proper cars] i am pretty lucky to be around to tell the tale's really, all things considered, the TT course is a killer.