Time to come out of the closet....

First off, let me be honest and say that I believe that 99% of UFO sightings are either hoaxes or explainable by cases of mistaken indentity.

However, I am finally going to come out of the closet when it comes to a personal experience I had when I was ten years old that I have never shared with anyone - including my wife.

It was June of 1979 and Skylab was in its final few weeks before re-entering the atmosphere. I was visiting some cousins that live on Lake Tillery in rural North Carolina. My cousin and I decided to stay up late, lay out on the pier, and stare up in the direction that Skylab was supposed to cross overhead according to what my Uncle had read in the newspaper earlier that day.

At approximately 1AM, over an hour before the time of the Skylab 'flyby', we saw an object slightly brighter than the north star approach from the northwest horizon (roughly the direction that Skylab was to cross) heading southeast. Since we had an completely unobstructed view to the northwest for over 6 miles across the lake, we tracked the object with our eyes from just above the horizon until it was approximately 30 degrees above to the northwest. Just as the object reached the 30 degree mark, it either seperated or our eyes could only then resolve that there were actually 6 seperate objects in an echelon 'formation'. The objects continued their trajectory to the southeast until they were about 60 degrees above the southeast horizon. At this moment, two objects (one from each end of the echelon) simultaneously stopped moving with the remainder of the 'formation' , became twice as luminous as the other objects, and then slowly made there way together due north until we lost sight of them over the northern horizon.

Being only 10 years old each, my cousin and I thought we had witnessed pieces of Skylab simply 'break-off' and 'parachute' back to Earth. When we told him the next morning, my Uncle thought this was simply childhood exaggeration on our part especially when he read in the next morning's paper that Skylab had passed much farther south and that the local community college astronomy teacher, the paper's source for the 'crossing time', had misinterpreted the coordinates that NASA had published.

My cousin and I insisted that we saw something and my uncle again wrote it off to our imaginations. At this point my cousin and I were starting to be convinced by our uncle that if we did see anything, it was probably either a meteor, or millitary planes flying into Fort Bragg or Pope AFB 80 miles to the east. As 10 year olds, we were easily influenced by adults and even more distracted by summertime fun so we quickly put our experience in the back of our minds.

Over the next couple of summers that my cousin and I would get together, we would briefly mention the 'drunk pilots' of the objects we saw that summer in '79.

As we became older, my cousin and I would see less and less of each other and probably never brought up our experience on the lake that night since we were 15 or so. Then this past Christmas, I got an opportunity to spend a good amount of time with my cousin for the first time in over 15 years. Among the many 'war stories' we shared about growing up, my cousin mentioned the 'drunk pilots' incident. It was honestly the first time I had thought about it in many, many years. We both walked out to the same pier we observed the objects and our memories of the event matched perfectly. It was then clear to both of us at that moment that what we observed that night in 1979 was certainly some form of intelligence at work - either an exotic millitary aircraft(s) or something not of this earth.

Since the event in 1979, it seems that both my cousin and I had developed a sort of 'in-the-closet' obsession in astronomy and aircraft. This is strange to us because we have no other peers that we grew up with that have any similar interests and it would seem that this obsession grew from our common experience. The knowledge and experienced gained from this hobby of ours has led us to believe even more strongly that what we witnessed that night was not some sort of meterological, astronomical, or any of the other blanket explanations that debunkers have used on UFO sightings.

Sorry if this ran on too much but I felt like it was time to share this experience 'anonymously' to determine if anyone else had witnessed this sort of 'formation' of objects in this time period or others.

I, like you, tend to believe that a large percentage of U.F.O sightings are hoaxes, or can be explained. However some of them simply can't and deserve to be taken seriously. I personally have never seen something in the sky that i could not explain, but how i wish i could!
My friend however had a very similar experience as the one you had. He would have been around 11 at the time if i remember correctly. He said that he was playing Football, or Soccer, whatever you want to call it, i am British so i call it Football It was a very clear night, and after falling to the ground he claims to have seen 3 objects, of different colours, zig-zagging, and passing each other making patterns. Then, suddenly, they shot off in 3 different directions up and out of his sight. Considering he was not the sort of person to make anything like this up, i believed him, and still do as he brings it up from time to time.

That is also strange how it influenced you to take an interest in the sky, especially as you say you never really thought about it for many years!
I am pleased for you that you are "out", as you put it. There are so many things we still do not know, and to ingnore or dismiss the unexplained is not right!

Nice post If there was ever a place to come out, this is it. I would consider your self lucky to have witnessed your sighting. And better yet you weren't alone. Isn't funny how something like this tends to stay with you even though you were only 10? Personally, I've haven't seen anything, but would like to. I keep my digital camera close by, just in case.

I would suggest visiting NICAP and MUFON's sites, and then look for the time in question and the area in question. See if there were any other reported sightings. At this point, you've just got unexplained lights in the sky. I've grown up on military bases though, and even I get fooled sometimes, so just something to keep in mind.

Still though, finding other sightings in your area during the same time, might help you to make sense of it...

Given the icon symbol for the topic (the alien) and the title of the thread (closet), I thought it was an invitation for all gay aliens to come out of the closet

I just want to add I did myself see something that's hard to explain. About 30 people, including myself, observed 6 to 8 blinking read lights arranged in a perfect parallel line with equal intervals. The distance to the phenomenon was difficult to gage as it was dark (around 11 p.m.), but to the best of my ability I could say it was 2 to 5 miles away and 300 to 1000 feet in total length. Interstingly, the whole thing would tilt left and right in a regular manner, then after about 10 to 15 min the lights started jiggling, broke formation and descended, at which point we lost sight of them.

I still don't know what it was. Was a bit scary but who knows, maybe some advanced helicopters test.

my dad a similar sighting to that in the early 70's in santa barbra california. A single, kinda large orangish-red light moving out towards the ocean. It exploded like into a triangle formation of lights but one was sent way out of line and swirled around, got back into formation and then it took off.

LOL...I guess I should have chosen a different Subject title :-)

Aside from 4 years in college, I have lived all 35 years of my life 8 miles from Pensacola N.A.S and 45 miles from Eglin AFB and have been accustomed to seeing all sorts of aircraft during night operations.

I can assure you that what we saw that night, particularly the two objects that broke 'formation', maneuvered unlike any aircraft I have ever seen to date.

Since my "coming out", I created a very crude sketch in MSPaint (below)that gives you a rough idea of what we saw.




W.E.S.B.