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UFOs: Seen One? Personal UFO Sightings (IHTM; Miscellaneous)

I'm glad you found somewhere to share your experience. That must have been frustrating.
To be honest, I was a bit amazed that there were so many closed minds about. Even people like the UFO investigator J. Allen Hynek originally thought the UFO sightings were nonsense, but he soon realized it wasn't.
 
For a few years I had a lot of sightings and one close up that caused me to rethink everything, not just the UAP phenomena but the way I thought about a lot of things. Always lights in the sky, seemingly outside the atmosphere like stars, always in groups of 3 or multiples of 3, except for the one night when they all left but one and it came close, hanging over a feild behind my house. It gave me a different kind of light show. Very weird, and I have not read any account anything like it.
 
I think the whole UFO subject is quite frightening to most people, they don't want to acknowledge it.
I'm not invested in any particular interpretation of the UFO phenomenon, but to the average person UFO is synonymous with alien spacecraft. Throwing aliens into our lives puts the whole human race on a lonely, remote trail through the woods at night, with no idea what's around us, what it might want with us, and no security from the trappings of civilisation. I guess that's a bit unsettling for some people.
 
You are right PeteByrdie,

People are unsettled with UFO talk and I blame a lot of this on scary, alien Hollywood movies like the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and a lot of other movies.

“ It came from Outer Space” freaked me out as an young kid.

But to this day I have never seen any match for the aliens I saw when I was younger.

They were small, pale, pasty, thin with rectangular eyes unless it was a helmet, but more human looking than not.

The part that makes me laugh to this day is their shoes were like “Mickey Mouse “ shoes big and bulky.
 
You are right PeteByrdie,

People are unsettled with UFO talk and I blame a lot of this on scary, alien Hollywood movies like the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and a lot of other movies.

“ It came from Outer Space” freaked me out as an young kid.

But to this day I have never seen any match for the aliens I saw when I was younger.

They were small, pale, pasty, thin with rectangular eyes unless it was a helmet, but more human looking than not.

The part that makes me laugh to this day is their shoes were like “Mickey Mouse “ shoes big and bulky.
Sounds like they were wearing space suits.
 
PeteByridie,

There were so many horror space films in the 1950s and early 1960s I could be wrong about the one-eyed space alien.
 
... “ It came from Outer Space” freaked me out as an young kid. ...
Is that the one with the one-eyed alien? ...

In their natural form the shapeshifter aliens in "It Came From Outer Space" were one-eyed.

images.jpeg
 
A few friends have mentioned their own UFO sightings to me over the years and in all cases they were either quite reticent to the point of not wanting to discuss it in detail or peppered the tale with phrases such as "now, I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous, but...". And this was after I'd been careful to tell them I was sympathetic and interested in what they had to say.

Ufology isn't a particularly high-status interest, in the sense it's often the butt of media jokes. So UFO witnesses are in a bit of a bind; either they've seen a UFO, which polite society seems to treat as a bit of an admission of failure, or they've mistaken something quite ordinary for a UFO, which is in some ways even worse. I'm comfortable enough with the fact that as a generally sceptical Fortean I've not only seen but photographed a (rather dull) 'UFO', but I can see why my friends, with their on the face of it quite remarkable tales of mysterious spheres covered in lights and the like, might have chosen to keep their stories quiet. It's like receiving admission to a club no-one really wants to join.
 
I believe this is called UFO stigma.

The federal government in the U.S. a long time a ago made sure they told the public in that believing in UFOs is equal to being crazy.

Good examples are Project Blue Book “ swamp gas and hysteria “ and Roswell “ weather balloon “ that was the only answer it could be.

Then all of this is mixed that UFOs are the demons and devil that is descending on the world and the end result is a bunch of garbage.
 
I believe this is called UFO stigma.

The federal government in the U.S. a long time a ago made sure they told the public in that believing in UFOs is equal to being crazy.
They (and other governments) have successfully done the same thing with conspiracy theories.
 
OK, as requested by @escargot on another thread, a couple of minor UFO sightings I've had and never posted here, because they were far too inconclusive, and quite possibly had mundane explanations.

The first happened around 1990, when I was living in Farnham, Surrey. I was standing on West Street in the town centre, outside the post office, chatting to a friend late one morning, and looking towards the Downing Street junction when I noticed a classic saucer shape hovering above the buildings on the corner. It wasn't huge, about 2-3 degrees across, hard to pin down the distance, but I thought it was over the buildings on the corner, so about 50m off. If I was pressed to estimate a size, I would say somewhere between 1-3 metres across. This was all a very long time ago, so all estimates could be way off. I looked at it fixedly because I had never seen a satellite dish or anything similar on those buildings and couldn't understand what I was looking at. After a while, I commented to my friend "What is that?" and pointed it out to him, he looked at it and saw it but displayed little interest, saying rather mockingly, "Maybe it is a UFO." and returned to the normal conversation. Next time I was back on West Street, I looked at the buildings from the same angle and there was nothing there. No idea what it was I saw, this was 1990, so drones weren't a thing. It was completely stationary and didn't look like a balloon - but it could have been! Just one of those things, minor weirdness, probably not aliens!

The second was rather more recent, in fact I made a note at the time, so it was 6 October 2021 - mid pandemic although I can't remember what the lockdown status was at the time. It was early evening and I was walking towards the local supermarket via the service drive when I saw a bright red light approaching fast below the cloud cover. It grabbed my attention because of the intensity of the colour and the unusual depth-of-field - it felt more 3D than real 3D, hard to explain. I would estimate that it was small and low, coming over a nearby hill. I decided to stand and watch it in order to better identify it. Since I was standing in the middle of the service drive, I glanced away for a split second to make sure I was not about to be mowed down by a supermarket lorry - when I looked back it was gone. My home town is under the flight paths for Heathrow and Gatwick, so there are always lots of planes in the sky, but this wasn't a plane (no flashing lights, no visible fuselage). It could have been a drone. I found the colour, my precise awareness of where it was in 3D space, and its disappearance the moment I looked away for less than a second, all very odd. But again, possibly mundane.
 
OK, as requested by @escargot on another thread, a couple of minor UFO sightings I've had and never posted here, because they were far too inconclusive, and quite possibly had mundane explanations.

The first happened around 1990, when I was living in Farnham, Surrey. I was standing on West Street in the town centre, outside the post office, chatting to a friend late one morning, and looking towards the Downing Street junction when I noticed a classic saucer shape hovering above the buildings on the corner. It wasn't huge, about 2-3 degrees across, hard to pin down the distance, but I thought it was over the buildings on the corner, so about 50m off. If I was pressed to estimate a size, I would say somewhere between 1-3 metres across. This was all a very long time ago, so all estimates could be way off. I looked at it fixedly because I had never seen a satellite dish or anything similar on those buildings and couldn't understand what I was looking at. After a while, I commented to my friend "What is that?" and pointed it out to him, he looked at it and saw it but displayed little interest, saying rather mockingly, "Maybe it is a UFO." and returned to the normal conversation. Next time I was back on West Street, I looked at the buildings from the same angle and there was nothing there. No idea what it was I saw, this was 1990, so drones weren't a thing. It was completely stationary and didn't look like a balloon - but it could have been! Just one of those things, minor weirdness, probably not aliens!

The second was rather more recent, in fact I made a note at the time, so it was 6 October 2021 - mid pandemic although I can't remember what the lockdown status was at the time. It was early evening and I was walking towards the local supermarket via the service drive when I saw a bright red light approaching fast below the cloud cover. It grabbed my attention because of the intensity of the colour and the unusual depth-of-field - it felt more 3D than real 3D, hard to explain. I would estimate that it was small and low, coming over a nearby hill. I decided to stand and watch it in order to better identify it. Since I was standing in the middle of the service drive, I glanced away for a split second to make sure I was not about to be mowed down by a supermarket lorry - when I looked back it was gone. My home town is under the flight paths for Heathrow and Gatwick, so there are always lots of planes in the sky, but this wasn't a plane (no flashing lights, no visible fuselage). It could have been a drone. I found the colour, my precise awareness of where it was in 3D space, and its disappearance the moment I looked away for less than a second, all very odd. But again, possibly mundane.
As for the Farnham sighting, could it have been attached to the building in any way? And could you see any detail on it?
 
Aside from my main interest in what you may have actually seen, I find this statement intriguing:

"After a while, I commented to my friend "What is that?" and pointed it out to him, he looked at it and saw it but displayed little interest, saying rather mockingly, "Maybe it is a UFO." and returned to the normal conversation."

Back in the early '90s, I and 2 other friends saw black flying triangles. (All three sightings were separate from each other and I've posted this before so I'll just try to hit the high spots.)

Although separate from each other, one friend's sighting was with several other people, and when he looked up and pointed out a huge black triangle overhead, his friends, as did your friend, do a similar dismissive take on the incredible object's appearance: They shrugged after looking at it and continued their conversation.

(My sighting was at an intersection, usually chockfull of traffic, being 3-lane configurations going both north-south and east-west, but strangely bereft of any other cars when I was stopped at the light and seeing the triangle. I had even stepped outside the car, something I would never consider under ordinary circumstances... but no other cars were in any of my three northbound lanes. So I couldn't ask anyone else if they were seeing what I was seeing.)

Your sightings and the 1990s sightings, recall the Oz effect, I believe. It does seem to kick in fairly consistently. I've read accounts where large numbers of people see a craft and then don't even mention it for the duration of the time they spend together, whether at a party or taking a road trip. Weird, but seems to be a genuine part of UFO phenomena.
 
As for the Farnham sighting, could it have been attached to the building in any way? And could you see any detail on it?
My first thought when I saw it was that it must be on a bracket attached to the building, but the more I looked at it the more I saw this wasn't the case. There was no detail, it was a metallic greyish colour, non-reflective. If you stripped all the detail off this pic, it gives an approximation of what I was seeing:
saucer.png
 
I worked in Farnham 2018/19 at an office in 24 West Street. The customer facing part of the post office had been moved to the W H Smith but that building was still being used by the post office. I would walk past it of a lunch time as I would walk up the Lion and Lamb to get my lunch.
 
I worked in Farnham 2018/19 at an office in 24 West Street. The customer facing part of the post office had been moved to the W H Smith but that building was still being used by the post office. I would walk past it of a lunch time as I would walk up the Lion and Lamb to get my lunch.
My friend and I were walking down from the Lion and Lamb yard when I had my sighting.
 
Between 2012 and 2015 I would drive past Farnham each day on the A31, there was regularly an advertising airship shaped air balloon tethered to the ground but quite high.

Could it have been one?
No I don't think so, I don't recall such a balloon in 1990. I lived in Farnham for practically the whole of the 80s, if the balloon existed back then, l would have recognised it at the time, even if I've forgotten it now.
 
No I don't think so, I don't recall such a balloon in 1990. I lived in Farnham for practically the whole of the 80s, if the balloon existed back then, l would have recognised it at the time, even if I've forgotten it now.

Interestingly it was near (just north west of) the Shepherd and Flock roundabout so it would have been in the right place.
 
Interestingly it was near (just north west of) the Shepherd and Flock roundabout so it would have been in the right place.
I used to pass the Shepherd and Flock all the time, I don't remember an advertising baloon at all... which is not to say that it wasn't there back then, I'm sure there's lots of things I don't remember... Maybe it was, an elongated balloon would certainly explain it.
 
I used to pass the Shepherd and Flock all the time, I don't remember an advertising baloon at all... which is not to say that it wasn't there back then, I'm sure there's lots of things I don't remember... Maybe it was, an elongated balloon would certainly explain it.
If an airship shaped air balloon was there I guess the tethering rope would not be visible being much further away.
 
Supposedly, no country has no plan on the action needed in case a UFO lands.

I think in England call the Sun, as the government stop accepting UFO calls.

I think in the U.S. call Bigelow Industries as the U.S. Air Force will not take UFO calls.
 
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