Watchers
in the Night Sky
By J. D. Adams
(Salem, Oregon) - Our UFO sighting
was in 1988, but it was years before we told anybody.
Amongst ourselves it was rarely mentioned, as if we
didn't want to believe it. Being practical Oregonians,
our minds reeled at the possibilities that were unleashed
by the occurrence. Suddenly we had become players in
one of the stories that we could only read about before.
I know now what others must have gone through when they
saw a UFO at close range, the incredulity that other
people expressed when we told them. It became a life-changing
experience. The universe seems a different place now,
less a barren vacuum of space.
Our sighting wasn’t necessarily
extraterrestrial, but it was an extremely advanced technology.
What that really means is open to conjecture. Most radical
departures from conventional wisdom have had to overcome
the inertia of the scientific community. One day we
will reach out for the stars, but it is folly to think
we will be the first to have done so. I have formed
this opinion only since that night in 1988. I was formerly
a person who looked at the sky expecting only the usual
clutter of planes, stars, and the occasional blinking
satellite.
Our encounter was on a crisp fall night
like any other, with errands to be completed. The sky
was clear and full of stars. My wife and I were returning
from the grocery store, driving northward along Fischer
Road in Salem, Oregon. It is a residential thoroughfare
that parallels Interstate 5. Out of the corner of my
eye I saw something hovering over the freeway. The unnatural
stillness and lack of visible support for the object
had caught my eye. At first I thought it was a traffic
helicopter, which by itself would have been unusual
in this area. As I looked closer at the object, the
uniqueness of it compelled me to pull the car over to
the side of the road and stop. I got out and listened
hard for the sound of rotor noise, but there was none.
The fact that it was only about 200 feet away made this
highly unusual. The craft had lights about its perimeter,
but the exact outline of the body was strangely indistinct,
like it had a low profile when viewed from the side.
In an attempt to explain the phenomenon,
I initially dismissed it as one of those Harrier jets
that can vent the exhaust downward for landing. However,
the quietness of the craft and the fact it was over
the freeway made this impossible. As human beings symbolic
logic is our forte. It is one of the things that distinguish
us from lower primates and other animals. But there
was nothing in my experience with which I could represent
the UFO in my mind, so I came up with the best that
I could, a rather poor representation of what I was
actually seeing. Later this would become more pronounced,
a bothersome feeling of something totally alien in my
familiar world. My wife was also observing the strange
craft. Exchanging glances with her, I got back in the
car and we drove on to Silverton Road, turning left
and passing under the freeway and several blocks westward
to our apartment.
As we turned into the parking lot, we
both viewed a sight that is still fixed in my mind like
a photograph. There was the hovering craft directly
over the parking lot. It had followed us over from the
freeway. I had to drive toward it as I pulled into our
parking spot. We watched in amazement for a few moments
and then decided to get out. There were no bright lights
shining downward, and nobody else was outside at the
apartment complex at this hour to view it besides my
wife and I. There was just it and the two of us, as
if we had been selected out of a nighttime crowd that
was too busy to look upward. One of my impressions at
the time was how unusually easy it was for something
so remarkable to be otherwise unobserved in the dark
sky. It appeared that the UFO inhabitants had seen us
watching them, and they were now looking at us out of
curiosity or to see if we represented some kind of threat.
At this point the craft was about 70 feet overhead.
I could see clearly it was perhaps 30 feet across, with
a triangular shape that was outlined with small round
lights. There was no significant sound coming from it,
only a faint humming that was barely noticeable.
The way it hovered absolutely motionless
made it all the more fantastic. The craft quietly defied
all rational attempts to explain it. It was real, a
dark gray triangle floating in a sea of stars. We stared
at it for what seemed like thirty seconds. By now tension
had built to an alarming degree, so we hastened inside
our apartment and walked directly across to the patio
door to look out. The craft was slowly moving southward,
building speed with deliberate precision. Its ponderous
mass floated like it was a feather, disappearing in
the night sky. Since we had said little during the event,
I asked what my wife had seen as verification. She mirrored
my observations. Looking at the clock, we were relieved
to see no time was missing. I feel privileged to have
viewed such an amazing phenomenon. We shall never forget
it.
Was it a secret military prototype,
the implementation of Nikola Tesla’s later theories
of gravity repulsion, spawned from his confiscated notes?
Perhaps. But at this late date nothing resembling it
has surfaced in the news. Or was it something from beyond
our solar system, cloaked in darkness and the ignorance
of our more primitive world?
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