New Compelling Sightings

[nikki630]

Is anyone aware of any new compelling sightings? By new I mean within the last five years. I know about the Chicago O'Hare sighting and the latest one from the UK, but there must be more than that.

If you look on the internet for recent sightings, they all seems to be of the 'flashing light in the sky' variety. I don't mean to disparage those types of sightings, they are just not very compelling.

It seems that all the programs I watch or books I read reference and rehash sightings that are ten, twenty, thirty or more years old . I know this phenomenon is still going on today, it just seems like we don't hear about the newer 'real' sightings. So where HAVE all the sightings gone ?

[Gene Steinberg]

Originally Posted by nikki630

Is anyone aware of any new compelling sightings? By new I mean within the last five years. I know about the Chicago O'Hare sighting and the latest one from the UK, but there must be more than that.

If you look on the internet for recent sightings, they all seems to be of the 'flashing light in the sky' variety. I don't mean to disparage those types of sightings, they are just not very compelling.

It seems that all the programs I watch or books I read reference and rehash sightings that are ten, twenty, thirty or more years old . I know this phenomenon is still going on today, it just seems like we don't hear about the newer 'real' sightings. So where HAVE all the sightings gone ?

There are actually hundreds and hundreds of new sightings, but as always, only a few get most of the attention.

In general, all it should take are a few compelling reports to demonstrate something weird is going on. But there's a lot more.

Listeners? What have you seen and heard?

[nikki630]

Originally Posted by Gene Steinberg

There are actually hundreds and hundreds of new sightings, but as always, only a few get most of the attention.

In general, all it should take are a few compelling reports to demonstrate something weird is going on. But there's a lot more.

I am sure there is something weird going on out there. I am also sure there are hundreds and hundreds of sightings that occur, but how many of them go beyond the flashing light variety ? I am thinking along the lines of David's experience, or the more recent Chicago O'Hare incident. Of the hundreds that are out there how many are THAT compelling and , and how do we find out about them ?

I guess where I am going with this is that flashing lights are easy to dismiss as simply misidentified swamp gas or the like.

Let me use David's sighting as an example of what I mean. David's case can not be dismissed as misidentified anything, it was daytime and he had a clear view. So that leaves three possibilities:
1) The observer is lying
2) The observer is crazy
3) The observer is telling the truth.

I have no reason to suspect that David is a liar or crazy, and at least parts of his story should be verifiable. That being the case, David is telling the truth. Since David is telling the truth, then he experienced something of high strangeness, that (to me) proves that there is, as you say, something weird going on out there and is worthy of serious investigation.

These are the kind cases I would like some groups or individual to focus on and make that information available to to the general public. I think these kinds of studies would go a long way in moving the study of UFOs out of the realm of fringe science and into the world of mainstream science.

[Poi]

New member here though I'm more into reading at boards rather than posting. I've had two sightings worth mentioning though ('least to me!) But I want to preface my sighting reports with some background that seems related in some way to those sightings.

Though I'd always been interested in paranormal events and UFO tales, I'd never really incorporated them into my belief system until a few years ago. After reading so many accounts of sightings by seemingly credible people, I finally got off that fence and decided they must be the real deal. (Well, as real as the human psyche can perceive.) Only after that initial incorporation did I finally see a UFO, actually about a month later. That aspect of background is what rocked me, not the actual sightings. Does belief create? Was I receiving confirmation? Was the Trickster at work making me just a little more crazy? Whaaat?

So my husband and I were sitting on the porch of a condominum on Lake Travis in Austin, Texas about eight in the evening. The sun was still shining brightly and we were watching cranes, turkey buzzards and planes in the sky over the lake. An old fashioned one propeller plane buzzed our condo twice just before we saw a white, bullet-like cylander flying by in the middle of our 180 degree view of the sky It was perfectly round, probably flying at or under ten thousand feet, had no wings, was silent and had no windows or markings of any kind. More stunning, the portion we considered the "front" of the craft seemed cloaked because it was the only part we couldn't see clearly due to a sort of heat signature. It looked like the mirage one sees on hot day in the country over the road ahead, but the wavy heat lines appeared to show a distorted blue sky rather than the white craft.

We watched it for thirty seconds or more and it finally flew into the one and only cloud in the sky. As a matter of fact, the cloud hadn't been there only a minute before our sighting so it must have formed very quickly. Just before entering that cloud we could see the very round rear of the craft.

Because I was the first to spot the craft and because I'm accused by my family members as being weird, I asked my husband to look up and tell me what I was seeing. His comment after gazing at it was, "I think we've seen our first UFO." We were very calm and I asked him to describe to me what he was seeing. Our versions matched, but since that time, he's nearly completely forgotten the episode or describes a disc rather than the cylander. I'm left to guess that he either didn't incorporate the sighting or he simply doesn't want to accept it. I wrote all of it down so I could report it to Peter Davenport and did so when we returned from our vacation.

On December first of the same year, we were driving back to Houston on a country road in what most people would deem "cotton" country. The fields were bare of course and the land very flat. It was about 6:30 in the evening and completely dark outside as we passed through a small town. The sky was ominous as an approaching cold front was heaving water laden clouds toward it off the nearby Gulf and they rushed by at a low altitude in a constant stream.

There was another small town about 15 miles away from our location and my gaze was drawn to it because something seemed out of place. We should only have been able to barely see the night sky lit up a bit, but instead there were five rows of lights, banked, hanging over the town, mostly obscured by the rushing clouds. I stopped the car to measure the lights and found it was about four inches long at arm's length. That's big. I grew up in this country and knew there was nothing taller than a cotton gin and I shouldn't have been able to see it or any lights on the gin at fifteen miles. But each of the lights was a little smaller than the head of a tack held at arm's length. They were stacked from top to bottom, five, seven, nine, seven and five. Too many lights to be the standard UFO, right?

We tried to imagine a Christmas display, but it was simply too high in the sky. The lights actually made the glow from the town's lighting show up even more. And the low ceiling of cloud cover may have amplified the effect the lights had, I don't know. I just know they didn't move for the entire time we watched which was about ten minutes. I had to wait a long time to be able to count the nine lights because the moving clouds didn't allow for much. All the clouds rushing by were lit by the phenomenon though. That's what drew my gaze in the first place.

So I'm trying to get my husband to describe what he's seeing when I notice a "sick" look on his face. He's obviously very disturbed by what we are seeing and he keeps looking back at the road we're on rather than staring at the lights. In fact, he never answered me so I just tried to describe to him what I was seeing. After that, I drove away and soon trees obscured our view. He couldn't talk about the incident and heaves a big sigh if I mention it today. Looks irritated in fact, and doesn't want to talk. But when we watched Spielberg's TAKEN, my husband said, upon seeing one of the big UFOs in the series, "That's what we saw." I agreed, but the lights weren't right at all. The size, but not the lights.

I corresponded with Peter Davenport about this sighting too, but he thought it was probably Russian rocketry that had streaked across the U.S. on that date. When he told me there should have been tails to the lights I knew we weren't talking about the same phemonenon as my lights were stationery for a prolonged period. But I've never seen them over that town again and I've had several opportunities to be in the same spot at the same time of night, even the same time of year. We made the same trip at roughly the same time of night later that month and the lights weren't there. It was before Christmas. Never saw them beforehand. But I think my husband is the weird person in the family now. I was curious. He was rather devastated.

[BrandonD]

Hi, I mentioned this sighting several months back but a few people here have asked me about it since so this seems like a good thread to mention it again. Here it is, quoted from my report to NUFORC:

03/09/07-
"My girlfriend and I were driving to our 7:30 dinner reservation, which we were late for, and as I was going along my street I saw a bright star off to my left. I'm always looking out for ufos so I made some comment about this star to my girlfriend, and she replied to stop looking at it and look where I was driving.

At the next intersection I turned left, and now the object was in the sky in front of us (and slightly left of the road). The light had grown and now it was no longer a star, but many blinking lights. Its altitude in the sky was much lower than a plane, maybe between 500 and 1000 feet up. My first thought was "Damn that thing has lots of lights" but I actually wrote it off as a plane because my eyesight is poor and I couldn't see any detail. Then a few seconds later my girlfriend (whose eyesight is better than mine) said "What IS that thing?" I looked over at it again and I asked her to tell me what she was seeing. She could actually see the solid object and said it was grey and egg shaped, and covered with blinking lights. It was flying about as fast as a plane or a helicopter, but erratically. I could see the blinking lights, which were multicolored (there were at least a dozen lights to my reckoning), but my eyesight was not good enough to discern the shape.

By this time it had flown further to our left. I said "screw the reservation!" and I took the next left to follow it. The trees obscured our view temporarily but I drove in the direction that it was in the sky. As soon as we got to a clearer view, the object was nowhere to be seen. We were both very baffled, because it should've been visible in the sky."

[Poi]

That's pretty exciting. I find myself more interested in the stories that describe something other than typical discs. Discs seem to be part of our mythology now though I'm not saying the craft aren't real. But we've been encouraged to accept typical grays and their discs when I believe the phenomenon is much weirder than we can really imagine.

[67fortsmithufos]

My screen name is based on a mass sighting in Fort Smith Arkansas that occurred on two consecutive nights in August 1967. Structured glowing craft were observed for hours by hundreds, reported live by radio AND television. These objects displayed physics defying flight characteristics for over four hours the first night, returning for an encore the next evening that lasted almost as long. These things performed (and it did seem like a performance) flying in formations, hovering, and streaking out of sight at incredible speeds; pretty much the entire UFO playbook. How compelling do you need? Yet I'll wager no one on these boards has ever heard of or read about this event. The official air force explanation: swamp gas.

[Brian Now]

Poi, when you mentioned Lake Travis it reminded me of a ghost photo someone posted in the Ghost part of the forums. Just a search or something (sorry, I am just too lazy to go find it). When the image is lightened you can see something pretty bizarre...it might be reflections on the water, but it's cool.

PS I am in Houston too. Looks like that makes 3 of us.

[BrandonD]

Originally Posted by Brian Now

Poi, when you mentioned Lake Travis it reminded me of a ghost photo someone posted in the Ghost part of the forums. Just a search or something (sorry, I am just too lazy to go find it). When the image is lightened you can see something pretty bizarre...it might be reflections on the water, but it's cool.

PS I am in Houston too. Looks like that makes 3 of us.

Hehe we now have enough people to form the Paracast Houston Chapter. I nominate myself as Treasurer.

[nikki630]

Originally Posted by 67fortsmithufos

My screen name is based on a mass sighting in Fort Smith Arkansas that occurred on two consecutive nights in August 1967. Structured glowing craft were observed for hours by hundreds, reported live by radio AND television. These objects displayed physics defying flight characteristics for over four hours the first night, returning for an encore the next evening that lasted almost as long. These things performed (and it did seem like a performance) flying in formations, hovering, and streaking out of sight at incredible speeds; pretty much the entire UFO playbook. How compelling do you need? Yet I'll wager no one on these boards has ever heard of or read about this event. The official air force explanation: swamp gas.

You are right -- I have never heard about this sighting, and it is just the kind of thing I am asking about. But again, and no offense meant, that was 40 years ago.

So,where are these kind of sightings today. If they are happening today and are being under reported, how do we find out about them? Because if we, who are interested in this topic, aren't hearing about these kind of experiences, you can bet the general public isn't.