Re: Close Enounters
Nothing that I could actually swear to being a
Close Encounter but I've seen lots of strange things in the sky on many occasions that didn't really conform to the aircraft / balloon description.
When I was still at school we had a school trip to Hampton Court Palace to see the Son et Lumiere - I think it was around 1964.
There was tiered seating set-up and we were all in our seats, with the teachers, waiting for it all to start when a large glowing object appeared, going slowly across the early-evening sky in front of everyone seated.
At that point we all thought Heathrow or a helicopter.
It then seemed to turn in the sky while staying in the same place so we thought "helicopter"!
As it did this, the glowing light went from a cigar or saucer shape to a central spot, which was very intense, then it seemed to be slowly coming towards us.
Within what seemed like milliseconds it was a huge ball of bright light seemingly behind and above the palace itself and it seemed to be pulsating.
I heard the teachers saying "military" or "helicopter" and that's what we all thought, until it suddenly shot straight upwards into the night sky at a speed that semed far beyond anything flown by man or created by man could possibly have done and it remained high above us as a pin prick of bright light for about 3 seconds then shot off to the left and vanished completely.
It was a clear night and everyone was talking about it but I don't remember anything in the papers but I do remember reports of UFOs over the same area several times since then.
In 1977 I was out in the desert at night in Saudi Arabia, watching over a pressure test of a pipeline we'd built when my colleague and I clearly saw 5 V-shaped objects high above us.
The odd thing was that they suddenly appeared but did not move in the sky for at least 3 minutes.
After that 3 minutes 4 of the objects started to encircle the one that remained stationary and after about a minute they were all lined-up in a configuration that was a star shape.
I don't know of anything that could have done that which could be man-made nor do I know of anything that could then separate seconds later and each section shot off in the direction of the V and disappeared.
We had a number of incidents like this in Saudi and once we saw what appeared to be a meteor strike close by.
I found a pit in the scrub desert about 15 feet deep with a glowing lump of rock in the centre.
This "rock" looked like a starfish fossil but it was incredibly hot so I picked it up the next day and took it to the ARAMCO Geology team and left it with them with a full description of the when and how I'd seen the thing.
When I went back the next day they denied I'd ever left anything with them but I found another one three weeks later - again in a pit - and I had it for a number of years because I thought it was somehow special.
I lost it through circumstances I'd rather not go into here but it looked like a 5-legged starfish, fossilised and was 7" across and completely uniform. stevmk2