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Have you ever seen a UFO?

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Tryphena Absent

18:40 / 09.05.06

There has been a lot of discussion about UFO's on the BBC site today: Have you seen a UFO?, UFO study finds no sign of aliens and Mackinnon fears UFO cover up.

So I wondered if any of you had ever seen a UFO?

I saw a weird orange oval in the sky over Finchley about 16 years ago. It's a hazy memory, all that I can remember is that it was hanging in the sky. It could have been anything really but that's the point... an unidentified object. I sometimes wonder idly what it was. Anyone else seen one?

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:57 / 09.05.06

Yes, I feel pretty sure that I have seen something I couldn't explain.

It was a few years ago. I woke up in the middle of the night--as is my habit--and looked out the window of my old apartment, which was pretty high up. I'm shit with distances, but something in the sky that looked like a slightly out-of-focus orb of silver-white light hovered perfectly still for about 30 min. And then it moved precisely upwards and hovered again, and then shot like a cannon way up into the sky.

It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

18:58 / 09.05.06

Me and my sister saw a weird burning orange-red spherical thing in the sky on the way ro school in about 1991. It had gone by the time we actually got to school and when we tried to tell people about it and everyone just took the piss and said it was obviously the sun, but it looked far too big, to red and too obviously on fire to be the sun and it was in the wrong place in the sky as well. I've been mystified by the thing and very glad my sister saw it as well ever since.

20:39 / 09.05.06

Does it count if you've heard one?

A few months ago, late at night, I was going down to the shop for some snacks and right outside my apartment (in the building's courtyard) I heard a very strange sound. It sounded like a fan of sorts, maybe a faulty airvent or, to be pparanoid, possibly a low flying nearly silent chopper. I couldn't quite determine the direction it came from, but it was definitely up.
I decided it was a bad idea to get too freaked out over it and so ignored it and went to the store.
On the way back, however, the really weird thing happened. I heard the same exact noise, but this time coming from the top of a building two blocks down the street from mine. It was definitely the same thing and it wasn't there when I passed the same building on the way to the store.
When I tried to investigate, it suddenly stopped, from one moment to the next, as if someone had flicked a switch. It didn't fade out or move away, it just stopped, just as I was walking towards the building it came from
It never came back and so I didn't find out what it was. There was no visible source and I have never before or since heard that sound.

Should I break out the tinfoil?

21:11 / 09.05.06

A related question: If you believe that you've seen a UFO, do you think it was ALIEN!S!!1!!? Are there alternate possible explanations? Are you being honest with yourself?

I ask because of an experience that I had in my early teens that I'm basically certain I fabricated. It didn't have to do with UFOs, but was along the same vein - and I fabricated and talked about the event because I wanted to feel special.

Do you want to feel special?

foolish fat finger

21:37 / 09.05.06

I saw a unidentified flying object about 15 years ago. I was on the beach, possibly in Guernsey. I saw a black silhouetted shape gently bobbing upwards in the sky. it was about the size of a beer can, only longer. It didn't look like just a balloon, not like any balloon I have ever seen. I still wonder about it. do I think aliens were involved? no.

21:52 / 09.05.06

I haven't, but my brother saw what he thought was a UFO a few years ago while he was driving on the highway - I think he said it was a hovering orange light or lights in the sky. He called the police, who said they'd received several calls about it, and they thought it probably had something to do with a nearby military base.

Tryphena Absent

21:53 / 09.05.06

Do you want to feel special?

Nope. I have no idea if it was aliens or not. It was just a glowing orange oval above me. I wasn't alone either... four of us stood in the street outside my house staring at the sky for about ten minutes.

foolish fat finger

23:26 / 09.05.06

that is pretty amazing... as is Kali's experience.

I am not trying to devalue anyone's contribution here, but a while back, I read a description in the paper of a woman's experience of seeing a cigar shaped object in the sky at night, in Whitehawk, Brighton. 'it was as bright as the sun' she said. in that case, how come no-one else saw it...?!

having said that, I have seen stranger things than UFO's, with my own eyes. so I know I don't know, and I definitely have an open mind...

08:38 / 10.05.06

What "stranger things"? I must know.

08:42 / 10.05.06

A few years ago some friends of mine spotted an undulating, flashing shape in the sky, that occasionally vanished altogether. They chased it, in a car, for about five miles until it landed.

It turned out to be a banner from one of those adverstising planes.

10:56 / 10.05.06

My Mum saw something strange once when she was on the motorway on the way home from a supermarket. For about 10 min she could see a light in the sky (I cant remember what colour she said), and it kept moving in a 'D' shape, it would slowly go up, curve down and round and go back up again.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:51 / 10.05.06

I always regretted not doing some sort of Internet search the day after to see if anyone in my area saw it as well. I'm sure Atlanta has a group of UFO enthusiasts.

As for feeling special, it didn't really make me feel special. It made me go, "What the hell...?"

14:09 / 10.05.06

My parents videotaped a UFO one night. They were driving through a wooded section of New Jersey when they saw a flying light following their car. They stopped the car and broke out their video camera (they happened to have been taping a square dancing exhibition that night).

The white light stopped when they did. It hovered in the air for a while and then changed course and flew away a bit, then flew back over to them, then changed course one more time and flew away.

Watching the video, I couldn't see any shape to the object other than the glowing light. They say there wasn't any sort of air disturbance as one might expect from a nearby helicopter. I want to say there was no sound either, but I can't remember.

It definitely seemed piloted to me, but I have no idea what it was.

They weren't interested in showing it to anyone else, but I made them give me a copy just in case [raging paranoia] something happened to them! [/raging paranoia].

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

17:04 / 10.05.06

My one, absolutely no idea what the heck it was - quite probably some kind of surprising optical illusion caused by the early morning mist I suppose.

If I'd been the only one to see I'd probably have concluded by now that it probably was something that i'd imagined and convinced myself was really there, but since I wasn't the only witness the credibility of that explanation drops quite a bit.

As to wanting to feel special, yes I want to feel special, ideally I want to feel like the most special king of specialness, but having seen an odd burning thing I can't explain in the sky once, that someone else saw as well doesn't really achieve that for me. I'd rather feel special for something I've actually done, rather than having observed a random odd object, that I happened to once be in the right place at the right time to see for a bit.

Earlier than I thought

17:58 / 10.05.06

I once watched a big ball of flickering orange light cross the sky at speed, late one night. My attempt to draw attention to this caused my mate to fall over some bins and completely miss the bloody thing.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:12 / 10.05.06

I feel that I should start a thread on other phenomena--outside of UFOs--that any of us have experienced.

I have got other shit that I've seen that I can't explain.

Tryphena Absent

18:39 / 10.05.06

We can change the thread title and summary if you want to talk about it here. This thread isn't hugely sustainable...

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:44 / 10.05.06

If you're okay with that, I am.

All Acting Regiment

18:55 / 10.05.06

I saw something round and grey/black spinning over the skyline once.

18:59 / 10.05.06

My SO and I saw a good one in Cornwall three or four years ago. We were camping, before dusk, clear sky, we were sober and alert, and saw a bright white light in the sky (like a meteorite/shooting star almost) descending at an angle quite slowly. We watched it move for about thirty seconds, trying to work out WTF. Then it disappeared, switched off like a light.
It wasn't something falling, as it was moving slowly at an angle. It wasn't a plane (no contrail, no wings, weird movement, too slow) it wasn't Venus (or Mars) and I'm pretty sure it wasn't a weather balloon or satellite reflecting the sun then dropping into the Earth's shadow (or it would have been visible before and not just suddenly appeared), it wasn't anything we could identify.
It was small arc, high albedo, moved strangely, appeared and then disappeared. Thus UFO. Aliens? Shit cloaking device if it was.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

19:03 / 10.05.06

Now THAT'S a bit creepy.

While I know that I saw something in the sky that couldn't be explained, I don't know quite how I feel about aliens. Again, I'm not going to presume we're alone in the universe, because that would definitely taking a very American point of view, but I do wonder why aliens keep kidnapping yokels.

Surely an advanced technology wouldn't want to deal with bumpkins.

Tryphena Absent

19:55 / 10.05.06

You're assuming that aliens can discern the class structure of human beings. Where do we get our animals for testing from?

Earlier than I thought

20:14 / 10.05.06

I could wander into that whole John Keel Ultra-terrestrial thing right now. But you wouldn't be able to shut me up. My own worthless opinion is that there's lights in the sky/shiny things what spin and then there's some kind subjective personal/shamanic vision experience, with anal probes and that.
There would seem to be a link between the two (providing that you accept a certain number of relatively reasonable anecdotal accounts) and it seems to have something to do with our archetypal concepts of sky/space. But as to what it is, fuck only knows. Randomly misfiring neurons or angelic demontelligences hacking our nervous systems, it's all good innit?

foolish fat finger

21:05 / 10.05.06

ok, this is my theory on alien abduction, take it or leave it. and I am certainly not saying aliens don't exist or visit our planet either.

ok, this came to me when I worked as a cleaner in an operating theatre. the lights were off, and there were just all these blinking lights, for oxygen, heat and so on. it looked just like the inside of a spaceship. then I noticed the main operating lights look just like the classic underside of a spaceship, like in that spielberg thing... er... 'close encounters' and I realised that people who experience alien abduction may be actually reliving or having a flashback to a birth trauma from a hospital birth. as Lloyd Grossman used to say, 'leart's exarmine the evidarnce'...

1. 'I saw a blinding light' this is the baby coming out of the dark womb into a brightly lit operating theatre.

2. 'I was afraid' the baby feels fear because it is literally entering an alien environment. operating theatres are not the natural arena for birth. sometimes 'coldness' is also mentioned in the accounts.

3. two types of alien- 'greens' and 'greys'. these are the two colours of operating theatre gowns.

4. the aliens typically have lips in a thin line- exactly what you would find from someone wearing a surgical mask.

5. the aliens are portrayed as being short, but with strangely long arms. this would indeed be how a normal human would appear from the operating table.

6. 'they probed me/ did tests on me etc' well, that is what they do on a newborn in hospital, especially if there has been birth complications.

I see the classic alien abduction experience as the evolutionarily new neo-cortical part of the brain attempting to process non-verbal memories that are buried deep in the primitive, survival part of the brain (hippocampus?). a bit of my degree show film was about this theory, but I think it may have gone over people's heads a bit...

22:02 / 10.05.06

I like the theory a lot and it does kind of hold together.
But the one problem is that newborn babies don't have very good eyesight so i don't know whether a baby would be able to pick up on the details you mention...

foolish fat finger

22:15 / 10.05.06

yeah... I don't know. my own memories of my birth are of being able to see, and kind of 'sense' objects. I remember seeing but not comprehending a lot of it. for instance, I remember being put into some kind of isolation bubble, a plastic thing, where sound and vision were distorted, a bit like being underwater.

I think that vision at birth may be a bit fuzzy beyond a few feet, which makes sense in evolutionary terms, as it would not be neccessary to see more clearly, but I think that enough happens within those few feet for birth memories that represent and stimulate alien abduction experiences to be imprinted.

of course, it is just my opinion.

08:59 / 11.05.06

Er, Stoats, forgive my scepticism, but your "memories of birth"? Really? I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone claim they could consciously recall birth memories before.

Tell me more.

foolish fat finger

09:52 / 11.05.06

Don Van Vliet has birth memories. he says something like 'I was all snug in there. I didn't want to come out'

I was very excited to come out, but then I got the cord wrapped around my neck, and it went really horrible. I don't remember much else clearly until they put me in an isolation cot with a clear plastic lid. I remember that clearly. I remember being aware of other babies in the room, and trying to scream as loud as I could, to get the noise to go through the plastic cover. I needed my mum there and I couldn't work out why she wasn't.

the memories aren't gone, they are just very deep in the memory banks.

anyway, I answered cos you asked, so that is why I am off-topic, y'all

10:23 / 11.05.06

a slightly out-of-focus orb of silver-white light hovered perfectly still for about 30 min. And then it moved precisely upwards and hovered again, and then shot like a cannon way up into the sky.

Kali, could that have been a distant silver weather balloon reflecting the sun? They tether them, raise them to an altitude to take readings, perhaps the tether snapped and it shot upwards. Although, why it would be out of focus I don't know. Haze?

11:32 / 11.05.06

where sound and vision were distorted, a bit like being underwater.

I know what you mean, I remember being born, it sounded like the sound you'd get if you through a bucket of water on to some cobbled stone path.

13:55 / 11.05.06

Stoat, I think your theory is brilliant.

And it seems completely possible to me that some newborns are going to have better eyesight at birth than others and a few will likely remember more than the majority.

13:59 / 11.05.06

I think there's a question about whether newborns are capable of forming longterm memories.

I reckon I'm gonna start a thread on the subject.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

14:01 / 11.05.06

1. I didn't really think about class structures as it pertains to alien abduction. I realize that I'm generalizing here, but most of the accounts that I have read rarely involve Mensa members. Toss names at me if you will, but this is just my observation. I presume that aliens abduct those sorts of people probably because they act as the same function in an animal sort of environment. The weakest ones at the edge of the herd and all that.

2. Stoathead, really brilliant theory. And also very very scary in a way.

3. As for the possibility of it being a weather balloon? Again, I don't know. All I know is what I saw. And what I saw was very very strange to me indeed.

Tryphena Absent

14:24 / 11.05.06

Working on the theory that alien abduction really exists this is how I perceive it...

I think aliens probably abduct people who are alone in isolated areas but I think that publicised stories are more likely from people who need the money and thus are poorer than the average person. If you've got a degree, you're quite bright, you have a well paid job then you're not going to tell anyone you're an abductee. You might lose your income and be the subject of all kinds of unfavourable scrutiny. You might possibly tell a therapist or academic exploring these ideas, a person who's sworn to confidentiality about your experience. I've read a range of abduction accounts- one a middle class housewife with three children who says she was systematically abducted over a period of 20 years so I don't accept that the phenomenon is only experienced by certain types of people.

We don't pick the weakest animals to test on, we select a range. No creatures with a spaceship are stupid enough to screw up scientific methodology, likewise we don't walk into a herd if we're observing its social structure. That disrupts behaviour.

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