On May 14, 2010, I had a UFO experience. My stepdad was diagnosed with prostate cancer (he's okay now), and he was to get robotic surgery soon. For a week I had been traveling from Eugene, Oregon each day to work in Lake Oswego, and then driving all the way back to Eugene to stay with my parents, waking up and driving back to Lake Oswego early in the morning for work. Nothing unusual had happened until Friday, May 14... I was working an early schedule, and finished work at about 2:30 that day, iirc. I merged onto I-5 South and headed for Eugene. It was a sunny day with blue skies, and no real clouds. Near milepost 276 - 279, there are large open fields scattered with farmhouses, and one can see all the way to the mountains in front of the coast range; it's a regular and busy stretch of highway, and I don't remember ever being alone there, the thousands of times I have made the trip from Portland to Eugene. As I neared the area, I watched the car in front of me disappear into the distance --as if I had somehow slowed down, or was stuck in some kind of time warp. Everything was lush and green, and as I drove past a grove of trees on the right, I turned to look out to the distance, and.. I was confronted with five bright glowing objects. They appeared to be round and were in a slanted straight line about 15° from the horizontal. The objects were initially extremely bright (like arc lamps), but I could still look directly at them, and they had distinct edges (this is a feature of other UFO reports too). The objects were perhaps 30' in diameter. As I looked, I could see that the tops seemed to be slightly reflecting the blue sky, and I thought they were metallic spheres, or at least had a metallic object within the glow. As I watched, shocked out of my mind, they seemed to slowly become more level and it appeared as if they might be approaching my car, very slowly. Initially I moved my head back and forth to see if they were some kind of reflection --no.. Then my mind raced to another possible mundane solution; a line of fighter jets moving away from me in formation --no. There they were. I looked around to see if there were other people seeing this; though I could see farmhouses and other structures, there was an eerie silence and no one was around. I was alone on the highway for I think the first time in my life and that was equally strange.. As I realized after a few moments that I was actually seeing UFOs, and they seemed to be slowly appproaching, I became worried. I had the uncanny feeling that I was being watched by them; I've never felt anything like it before or since. Worried, I kept driving very slowly ahead and then lost them as I passed another grove of trees. Suddenly they reappeared ahead of me on I-5 (further south) in Echelon formation (just as in my avatar), this time glowing orange-red, and hanging in the sky, hovering. Then they either shot off further south or suddenly lost their luminosity (not sure which), and I couldn't see them anymore.. Then things were to get very strange indeed.
Later, arriving at my parents house, it was much later in the day than I think it should have been (almost evening). I didn't mention anything to my parents that evening, I was still in shock. The next day I did some Google searching and found out that that night was the first night of the McMinnville UFO festival; I didn't know that at the time. I'm a librarian and when I described the events to my office mate of about 20 years (now retired), he mentioned that his family owned a farm literally right next door to the Trents, and his parents knew them, as they were direct neighbors. I asked him to show me his house and the Trent farm on Google maps, so I could see where it was. It turns out that the objects I saw were coming from directly over the area of the Trent farm, as the crow flies... What is the chance of having and office mate who grew up next door to the Trents? And the McMinnville UFO festival had was beginning that night --also in the same direction.. I had no idea where McMinnville was located relative to I-5. So, when I came back to work later that month, I passed the magazine section --an the freaking Trent photo was on the front of Time magazine... It was the 50th anniversary of the photo being taken, I had no idea. Shocked me again.
After sojme Googling, I discovered that Leeroy Chiao saw the same formation fly past the ISS, though he later changed his story to "fishing boats":
View attachment 17781
Then in
The UFO evidence by Hall, the same formation was seen flying in 1956 in Boulder NV:
View attachment 17780
I tried for some months in vain to find corroborating evidence, or sightings, then, about three years ago, I was in one of the databases (NUFORC), randomly looking at sightings sorted by object shape, and I was looking in the "rectangle" section, and I found it...
Five months later, and 250 miles further south on the same Highway.. I think the objects were cloaked in Roseburg, hanging out over the hill, until they powered up and headed back to where they came from.
Occurred : 10/20/2010 00:10 (Entered as : 10/20/10 00:10)
Reported: 7/30/2011 6:15:29 PM 18:15
Posted: 8/7/2011
Location: Roseburg, OR
Shape: Rectangle
Duration:3 min
5 round white lights hovering over I-5.
Driving south on I-5 in Roseburg at 1205 at night I saw 5 very large round white lights in a long row floating in air about 300 feet up. They were even with top of hill and extended out of river. I could not understand what they were since it was silently hovering there. Others were pulled over on side of highway looking at it. As I got closer it started to float north above I-5. As it passed over me I could not see the stars or clouds between the lights so I believe it was a long solid object with the 5 lights. The lights did not illuminate the ground or send out a beam like a car light.
It continued to head north above the highway.
I am in law enforcement and my husband is an ex air force pilot. We have observed planes of every description as a hobby and I know that this was nothing either of us have seen before.
((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD))
((NUFORC Note: Report from law enforcement officer. PD))
Sometime after my sighting I got shingles and was out for nearly a month; I attribute it to the stress from experiencing the objects.
I think about them every day --even when I don't want to.
