Have you ever, or do you know someone who has, seen a UFO?

[Skip Intro]

Poll question: Have you ever, or do you know someone who has, seen a UFO?

If you have, or if you have an account from someone you know who has, please share.

[abq e streeter]

1. I actually know two people that claim to have been abducted

One of them is nuts, so that's par for the course. The other isn't...she is a grounded intelligent person and has confided her story to very few people, both for fear of ridicule, and because recounting her alleged experiences is very upsetting to her; apparently these are rather unpleasant memories. Needless to say, it's practically impossible for me to believe her, yet there's a little sliver of self doubt in dismissing her claim, just because of knowing what kind of person she is.

I also have an old roommate who saw one while traveling on a bus in Mexico in the middle of the night when almost everyone else was asleep, but he, the driver, and a teenage girl all supposedly saw it. Again, this guy is a highly intelligent, educated (masters degree in economics) "normal" person.

I'm glad I've never seen one; I think it would spook the hell out of me.

[kedrys]

2. I've seen two - the first one was also written up in

my local newspaper, with a mention that the radar operators at the airport tracked it as well and were scratching their heads trying to figure out what the heck it was. It showed up for at least three consecutive nights, half my school saw it, as well as my sister and her friends at home (I lived in the dorms a few miles out of town at the time, and she still lived at home). That would have been in early '79.

The second one I only caught a glimpse of, as guests out for a smoke on my second-floor balcony started exclaiming "what the hell is *that*?" - by the time I made it out there, whatever it was took off literally at warp speed and disappeared in a flash. That was in 1999 or 2000.

Tell you what though - whoever was driving those things weren't no roosky pilots.

[HopeHoops]

3. I've seen one. It was a flying object and DEFINITELY unidentified.

At first I thought it was a 757, but it could have been a 767 or maybe even a 747. It was pretty damn high up so I just couldn't identify it.

[Ptah]

4. I was working in a welding shop in Snowflake, AZ.

I welded a broken bumper for a customer.
After the customer left the shop owner told me
that I had just fixed Travis Walton's truck.
This was in 1979.

[revolution breeze]

5. Hubby was a sailor for 22 years.

Of that time, he spent over half on ships. He said there are alot of unexplainable things in the sky when you are in the middle of the ocean.

[PassingFair]

6. I've had my dealings with them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz7sBTHtcLU

[LibertyLover]

7. Saturday evening, the first weekend in May, 1967

I was in 9th grade at the time. My best friend and I had spent Saturday afternoon at my house listening to records and had gotten permission from my parents and hers for her to sleep over. We decided to walk to her house, roughly a mile or so away, to get her clothes and have my mom pick us up. It was a lovely evening and so we took my 2 year old German Shepherd with us so that he could enjoy it. On the way, we stopped at church and went to confession (I was RC at the time) and introduced our favorite priest to Hans, the dog. Father Tom really liked Hans and Hans was perfectly happy to have one more person pet him. Then we walked through town and cut across the playground of one of the 2 elementary schools in town to get to the street my friend's house was on. By now it was dark, but the school security lights were on and so were street lights, so we didn't have any problems seeing our way. Off to our left, at the end of the playground, was a Little League baseball field. We were probably 120 feet from the fence of the baseball field and starting to cross the street bordering the playground to walk the one block over to the street my friend lived on when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and looked back over my shoulder so that I was looking back towards the baseball field. Hovering over it at, roughly 50 or 60 feet in the air, was something. It looked like it was 40 or so feet long and made out of latticework with lights every 2 feet or so. The shape was dumbell-shaped in that it appeared to have a rounded area at either end connected by a tube. It made no noise. At the time, for my age and the time period, I was well traveled, having been to all 48 continental US states, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Morocco. I had been on planes a number of times and not just 707s, but smaller commuter planes as well. I knew was a plane sounded like as well as what a hovering helicopter sounded like and this thing wasn't making a sound. We were about 120 feet from it and should have heard something. My friend saw it as well and we both just stood there watching. Then I realized that my dog was pulling on his leash. I looked away from the thing in the sky and at my German Shepherd, who was frantically trying to dig a hole for himself. That scared us. We took off running to my friend's house. When we got there of course nobody believed us.

3 years later, the summer between senior year and first year of college, several of my friends and I had gotten together at another friend's house to swim and just hang out. It was one of the last times we would see each other until Christmas. Beth's parents were there of course to supervise us - not that we were particularly wild or crazy - they actually liked us and liked to talk with us. For some reason, the conversation turned to UFOs and Beth's dad told about the time 3 years before that he and his wife had seen something. The family lived on a street that was a block long and dead-ended into the play ground of the second elementary school in town, the one I had gone to in fact. Their house was maybe the second or third from the end. Both parents were pharmacists who worked for the regional hospital. Beth's dad had picked her mom up at work and as they were coming down their street they saw a lighted object in the sky start to glide down towards the playground. Beth's dad, Mr. DiMarco, pulled the car into their driveway, jumped out, told his wife to call the police and started running towards the playground. He assumed, he told us 3 years later, that it was a small plane with a medical or mechanical emergency and figured if the latter, he was a pharmacist with first aid training. It wasn't until he got closer that he realized that the object wasn't shaped like a plane, looked like it was made out of latticework with lights and wasn't making any noise. He just stopped and stared as it suddenly took off. Mr. and Mrs. DiMarco and I compared notes and realized that we had all seen something odd on the same night at roughly the same time. To be honest, that freaked me out almost as much as watching my dog try to dig a hole to get away 3 years earlier.

In the interests of full and fair disclosure, I do believe that some UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin and that we have been visited in the past and are being visited now. I also believe that other UFOs are earth-origined and the result of US or other governmental projects. I am not sure if what I saw was ET or T in origin. I know that I could not identify it. It displayed characteristics that I was not familiar with, nor had seen previously.

[bikebloke]

8. Washington DC, back in the 50's.

There was a spate of siting over DC. My grandmother saw one over the Georgetown Reservoir, but didn't tell anyone because they would have thought she was crazy. Then the next day it was in the paper.

[Nikia]

9. My former neighbors had been abducted by aliens

I don't remember the details, but they told us all about it.
My grandfather believed in UFO's because his Air Force buddy saw a recovered one and alien bodies at the Air Force base in Dayton, OH.

[RZM]

16. LOL

My mother worked at that same base her entire career. She thought it was pretty funny that people believed such a thing could be covered up for decades.

[Crazy Dave]

10. I've seen two that were seen by others at the same time

One in Colorado, the other in Spain.

[pitohui]

11. a great many people

used to be involved w. a guy who worked for hynek, so yeah...you might say i knew a few folks who have seen ufos...i knew the whole spectrum, from the credible to those who had the wildest of experiences and abductions

a lot of these experiences have been published over the years in the large literature that already exists, i think folks who are truly interested in ufos don't have to get their stories from a lounge thread

real experiences are too complex for a post, some have been explored in entire books

[pintobean]

12. Saw them in '77

They rocked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aatjerFCRP8

[Heidi]

13. Yes. Several. But I'm a journalist. UFO doesn't = woo-woo.

It just means someone saw a flying thing s/he couldn't identify. :shrug:

[stray cat]

14. I have seen something moving in the sky that I could not identify

So yes an Unidentified Flying Object

[Silver Swan]

15. Back about 1950

We were eating dinner when there was a strange sound in the sky. My father said, "Flying saucers!" We all ran outside to look. I don't recall seeing anything, but I was only four years old. Nevertheless, I was nine before I learned that the existence flying saucers was questionable.

[david13]

17. Unidentified by who? It's just too vague of a concept. dc

[nolabear]

18. I more or less knew the people involved in one of the most famous cases.

I say "more or less" because I was young enough that I only vaguely recall one of them, but am aware that they were both around.

I'm talking about Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, who were supposedly taken abouard a UFO in Pascagoula, MS. in, I think, 1977. They were fishing in the Pascagoula River in a place that was really easily visible from the highway and railroad, which doesn't give the story a lot of creedence, but that week there had been sightings all over the gulf coast.

Anyway, the two were workers in the local shipyard and came into my grandparents' cafe regularly. My grandmother's assessment was that they were probably drunk, but that's the kind of thing she would say. Hickson gave interviews and talked about it, but Parker, who was pretty young, moved way out in the country afterward and wouldn't talk to anyone, and is said to have had a bit of a nervous breakdown.

You can find quite a few interviews on Youtube, and audio of the tapes made when they were left alone together in the sherriff's office to see what they would say when alone together. I don't know what happened, but they sure as hell believed something did. It's probably the most detailed description of an "abduction" on record.