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One reason I continue to `believe`.

I saw a UFO fly over the full sky from vertically above, (I was looking straight up), all the way down to the horizon and beyond. Before it disappeared over the horizon and disappeared over the curvature of the Earth it made an "S" shape maneuver.

It looked like your typical meteorite before it made those shapes but moving slightly slower. Slow enough for me to track the object. I say this as a lot of meteorites tend to be so fast that they are seen in your peripheral vision.
The whole sighting lasted about 4 seconds.

Someone suggested that it could be the space shuttle re-entering as it apparently makes S shape maneuvers when doing so.

I question that as I have a rudimentary, maybe say common sense understanding of physics and know that the space shuttle cannot travel that fast.

To the OP - this is my experience that I remind myself of when I'm sick of the chaff and when skeptics trim the facts to fit the hypothesis.
 
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eburacum said:
Note as well that meteors and meteorites range in speed from about 7km/s to 40/km/s and possibly more, so there is a wide range of speeds..
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Yes, the speed depends partly on the original orbit (orbits with distant aphelions will provide meteoroids with higher speeds than those from smaller orbits); and approaching against the Earth's revolution and rotation also increases the relative speed. (This is why more and brighter meteors are normally seen after midnight, as then they have a much higher relative velocity to Earth - a head-on car crash is more destructive than a tail end shunt!)
 
I still find it impossible to make myself believe, must admit even though I know three separate lots of people who claim to have seen something unaccountable - two (both times it was two people as well) recounted the classic being-buzzed-on-a-country-lane by a UFO type thing. The third is a friend of mine brought up in Maine (not Stephen King!) who is someone I would utterly believe, who described seeing a huge craft in the night sky near her house, as a kid. She is a highly educated person, and one of nature's sceptics herself. Yet still... I can't quite bring myself to believe.

I do remember as a kid in the 1960s, my mum's friend's son worked at Fylingdales and despite signing the Official Secrets Act, he told his family he had seen something very unaccountable on a radar screen one night.
 
Zeke, I have no trouble believing your friend's story. Your description of what he saw sounds very similar to something I saw one day in the early 90's over Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. I had taken my wife and young kids to the Wings Over Houston airshow. We met up there with my brother and we all enjoyed the airshow. When the show was over huge crowds of people went out to where our cars were parked. It was obvious that getting out of the parking area and moving on the road was going to be a long slow process, so we decided to make ourselves comfortable and wait for awhile. I climbed onto the hood of our big K5 Chevy Blazer and leaned back against the windshield. I was looking up at the sky when I noticed something odd. There was a large metallic looking object hovering straight above us, very high in the sky. It wasn't possible to judge its altitude because we didn't know what it was or its size. But it was obviously very high because it had a hazy appearance due to the great distance it was above us. It didn't move. There was no sound from it that we could hear. It resembled one of those high altitude balloons that are teardrop shaped, but this thing was oriented with the big end pointing to the north and the pointy end to the south. I pointed it out to my family and we all watched it. Whatever it was we saw it there for about a half hour and it never moved. We finally looked up and never saw it again. I don't know if it was some weird balloon, black technology or something piloted by space aliens. I have no way of knowing what that was. I know five of us saw it.
 
eburacum said:
Some meteors do 'bounce' off the atmosphere; the Grand Teton meteor was seen by thousands of observers as it bounced back into space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball
Note as well that meteors and meteorites range in speed from about 7km/s to 40/km/s and possibly more, so there is a wide range of speeds..
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I would call the event in the link you sent me a graze rather than a bounce. Would a meteoroid/ite make an S shape bouncing off the earth's atmosphere?
 
cardinaluk said:
I would call the event in the link you sent me a graze rather than a bounce. Would a meteoroid/ite make an S shape bouncing off the earth's atmosphere?
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It might do an 'S' shape if it was spinning and had an irregular shape, I think.
 
It depends on the angle you see it from, I think. A object bouncing off the atmosphere would go downwards, then upwards, but then could curve downwards again under the influence of Earth's gravity. Even if it is eventually lost altogether the path could look vaguely s-shaped when seen from behind.
 
eburacum said:
It depends on the angle you see it from, I think. A object bouncing off the atmosphere would go downwards, then upwards, but then could curve downwards again under the influence of Earth's gravity. Even if it is eventually lost altogether the path could look vaguely s-shaped when seen from behind.
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In fact, in the case of a meteorite bouncing back into space, the change in trajectory would be barely discernable from the ground. It would seem more or less straight and flat. The Grand Teton meteor is a good illustration of that.

I know that this explanation is regularly put forward to explain sightings of objects going down and than suddenly clinbing into the sky (even sometimes when they are going back towards the direction they came from !), but it can't account for them. Nor for a S-shape trajectory.
 
Oh, yes it can. At least for an s-shaped trajectory; some of the other trajectories you mention are not explainable by this method, but a meteor skipping outwards then being drawn back towards the Earth by gravity would look like a long drawn-out S.
 
p68.jpg

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Well, a sigma-shape, if not exactly an S. Seen from the right angle, this trajectory would look quite distinctly recurved.

I believe that several 'skips' of this kind are possible, but they are unlikely, unless the object is intelligently controlled - which would probably mean it was controlled by NASA or some other space agency, rather than ET.
 
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I've just read: UFOs, ET's and Alien Abductions by Don Donderi phd (Hampton Roads 2013).

Can anyone give me the low down on this guy? He seems very credible and claims to be a `biological psychologist` and a former Associate Dean at McGill University...and so on.

There's no reason why he shouldn't be, but I'm wary - post the unmasking of Philip Imbrogno who (it has been said)claimed all sorts of academic credentials he didn't in fact have (when being a high school teacher - which he actually was - would have been good enough for me!)

Anyway, the book is written in a very plain speaking no-nonsense style and I got through it in three sittings, but need to read it again for the details. My knee jerk response is: now that's refreshing - people are still writing UFO books like this, thank god! Which is to say that it's good old rootin' tootin' nuts and bolts UFO book, with no New Age trappings. His UFOs are just extraterrestrial craft, and not benevolent (the guy was an associate of Bud Hopkins after all).

To kind of get back on topic, it features an interesting psychological explanation of the kind of reductionist dismissals that Eburacum might - I say might - be guilty of: how old paradigms that explain the world resist being dislodged by new information by bringing in new stimuli into the fold of the old paradigm e.g if all UFOs can be explained away as space junk and meteors then-ta da! - there is no reason to revise science as it stands by bringing awkward anomolies into it.

I need to read it more thoroughly though. Just watch your back Ebaracum: you might be right some of the time, but not always! :)
 
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As I've said, my current metaphysical paradigm includes an infinite multiverse, in which I'm right in some of the alternate universes and wrong in others. You can apply this to other cases, like the Jack The Ripper murders and so on. At the moment we don't really know which universe we are in - maybe one day we'll find out.
 
Thanks Myth!

I for one was not familiar with the Chiles-Whitted 1948 encounter (first on the list).

The point being that it bears quite some resemblance to my friends account (which started this thread) and also some other similar sightings which Eburacum claimed to have debunked - and yet it predates the era of space junk (which is eburacum's chosen explanation for such things).
 
Meh. I don't have to debunk Chiles-Whitted; plenty of people have done it before me.
Here's an analysis by the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) which finds that the sighting is less than convincing.
http://www.nicap.org/reports/480724montgomery_shough.pdf
There is nothing in this case that convincingly rules out a fragmenting fireball and the "airship effect" which
causes the eye to see a line of glowing fragments as lighted windows in an elongated machine...
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If even the NICAP UFO enthusiasts are less than convinced I can't expect anyone else to be.
 
And here's Kevin Randle, another UFO enthusiast, on the Chiles-Whitted case.
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/meteorite-men-and-ufos.html

I believe, based on the illustrations supplied of the Zond 4 and the descriptions given by Chiles and Whitted, that they probably saw a meteor as it approached them and then broke up. Given that this was 1948 and extremely early in the morning, there simply weren’t any other witnesses awake to see the object, though there were some ground reports. The illustrations made by them seem to match those drawn to reflect the Zond 4.
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There should be little subjective difference between a large natural bolide meteor and re-entering space debris, assuming that the velocities are similar.
 
I promise you that there is something out there and that you will know for yourself in the future. I had my first ufo experience when I was a little kid my family lived on the Isle of dogs in London I remember being out on the balcony and one of my aunts was holding me in their arms when your typical saucer was literally in front of meIinside was a man I've always thought of him looking like bluto from popeye I remember smiling at each other and then I'm not sure how much later but I remember being in Millwall park which was downstairs in the park there were police army and nuns and a large bouncy castle had been set up I remember a nun saying to me "you never saw anything" and in reply I nodded my head and the nun then said good boy go and play on the bouncy castle... my auntie has maintained my whole life that she saw an angel with me??? I don't know whether she means this day or another. Since then I have had other experiences and have always hoped that by now the whole world would be aware
 
He seemed friendly enough like I say I believe that I saw a man rather than a grey or other type of alien species. That day has been imprinted on my mind ever since
 
Crazystuffhappenstome said:
I promise you that there is something out there and that you will know for yourself in the future. I had my first ufo experience when I was a little kid my family lived on the Isle of dogs in London I remember being out on the balcony and one of my aunts was holding me in their arms when your typical saucer was literally in front of meIinside was a man I've always thought of him looking like bluto from popeye I remember smiling at each other and then I'm not sure how much later but I remember being in Millwall park which was downstairs in the park there were police army and nuns and a large bouncy castle had been set up I remember a nun saying to me "you never saw anything" and in reply I nodded my head and the nun then said good boy go and play on the bouncy castle... my auntie has maintained my whole life that she saw an angel with me??? I don't know whether she means this day or another. Since then I have had other experiences and have always hoped that by now the whole world would be aware
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Welcome Crazy.

Your account is a little hard to understand in some places. I think what you need to do is to write out a full explanation of what happened to you. (You can put it in the It happened to Me section on this site).You should start at the beginning, include all the relevant details - and write in short and simple sentences.(Treat us like we're thick!)

I for one would like to hear your story - and will not rush to discount any experience that is clearly and sincerely presented to me.
 
Crazystuffhappenstome said:
I promise you that there is something out there and that you will know for yourself in the future. I had my first ufo experience when I was a little kid my family lived on the Isle of dogs in London I remember being out on the balcony and one of my aunts was holding me in their arms when your typical saucer was literally in front of meIinside was a man I've always thought of him looking like bluto from popeye I remember smiling at each other and then I'm not sure how much later but I remember being in Millwall park which was downstairs in the park there were police army and nuns and a large bouncy castle had been set up I remember a nun saying to me "you never saw anything" and in reply I nodded my head and the nun then said good boy go and play on the bouncy castle... my auntie has maintained my whole life that she saw an angel with me??? I don't know whether she means this day or another. Since then I have had other experiences and have always hoped that by now the whole world would be aware
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I'd like to hear your story as well.

I'm not as interested in UFOs as I used to be, signal to noise ratio I guess.

But I'm willing to listen.
 
eburacum said:
Oh, yes it can. At least for an s-shaped trajectory; some of the other trajectories you mention are not explainable by this method, but a meteor skipping outwards then being drawn back towards the Earth by gravity would look like a long drawn-out S.
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Having studied the figure you gave, I note that the various phases would extend for more than 300 km. So that I doubt that it would be really noticeable. Well, maybe a very perceptive observer could discern a slight change in direction under the best conditions of observation, but I don't believe that it could account for the more detailed reports of an abrupt S or sygma-shape.
 
We are talking about an object probably more than 70km from the observer. An s-shaped curve 300km long should be discernible, if the observer is positioned correctly.
 
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