Ask Lemmy

In the late nineties I saw what I thought was a shooting star, until it stopped mid fall, hovered in place for a few seconds, then suddenly accelerated (extremely quickly) to the right, before stopping again and immediately heading back in the direction it was originally headed. The direction changes were instantaneous, unlike anything I had seen before or since. I did live on the outskirts of a military base known for advanced weapons research though, so who knows what I saw.

UFO sightings plummeted in frequency when cameras became ubiquitous for people, but correlation ≠ causation...

Personally, I have seen ball lightning, it was scary as fuck because I knew exactly what it was and didn't want it anywhere near me. A tree was struck by lightning as we were driving home in the family car in the late 80's / early 90's and several little white balls hovered around it. My dad then punched the gas and ran the red light we were sitting at, and had me look up ball lightning in the encyclopedia when we got home.

Absolutely true story.

I was a latchkey Gen-X. Once, as a young teenager, I was sure I witnessed a UFO landing in my back yard. It was night in the fall, and I was alone.I was alerted to a sound like a giant vacuum cleaner. I looked outside and saw smoke and a big machine with lights, either in my back yard or neighboring field. It crept closer, and spun around. My heart was racing.

Then I realized it was a combine tractor in the neighboring field, harvesting cross at night. The smoke was dust from the harvest. That's when I realized: Anything can be a UFO if you are bad at identifying things, and don't realize it's not flying.

Less than a year ago my cousin and I were sitting outside when we saw a green light in the sky slowly approaching us. There's a small airport nearby, and it's common to see light aircraft flying in the area, so we both assumed it was just a plane. The strange part was that it wasn't making any sound at all, which made us pay closer attention to it.

It got pretty close to us, maybe half a mile away, when it suddenly stopped for a moment, made several rapid movements in a geometric fashion, and then disappeared behind a nearby hill (not the direction it came from). Neither one of us could explain what we had just seen. We've both lived our entire lives in this small town, but we've never seen anything like that.

Around 1991 on Intestate 5 in California. My mom liked to drive at night so me and my sister would sleep. Far in the distance there were some lights brighter than any vehicles on the road. As we approached it was clear they were above the road, but swinging back and forth perpendicular to the road. Kept getting closer and could see that it was three very bright round lights in an equilateral triangle, maybe only 50 feet above the road and still moving back and forth. I was very frightened as we passed under it, and I turned around and watched it until it was a tiny dot again the rear. It made no sound. It wasn’t an airplane.

"UFO Sightings" in this era is just some kid playing with their drone.

I've actually flew a drone in the middle of the night (hey I was bored and couldn't sleep okay) throughout my neighborhood, someone who was up at night might've seen it and thought it was a UFO.

Sure. Late '80s. It was pitch back, triangular, small, slow, and quiet. My mother was driving and we were on our way to an astronomy meeting. Which is to humble-brag that we had both spent a fair amount of time staring at the night sky and could identify most aircraft/stars/planets/meteors etc. It moved in a truly bizarre fashion.

I think I noticed it first because it was a super slow set of lights. Our car was going about 45 mph and we seemed to be outpacing it easily on a parallel path. I could see trees on the edge of a farmer's field and it was lower than the tops of the trees. That was the point of reference. It was absolutely out of the ordinary. Although we were outpacing it, my mom made a wrong turn at the next intersection. It was actually fortuitous because this put is directly in the flight path and I was super curious to ID it.

When my mom saw it I just remember her saying over and over - "ArtieShaw? ArtieShaw, what is that? What is that???"

When I realized that she was equally weirded out, one of us clicked off the car radio and one of us lowered the windows. That's when we realized that it wasn't just quiet, but completely silent and flying maybe 25 feet above the ground. There were lights on it, but they didn't illuminate the aircraft at all.

After passing under it, she needed to re-route the car. And the next bit is probably the part the freaked me out the most. It followed us.

I was able to keep eyes on it for the entire time because I wasn't driving. In fact, I was partially out the window of the passenger seat. When we got back to the main road, she pulled over in the dirt lot of a farmer's market stand on the corner.

It flew over us again and we agreed that we couldn't see more detail beyond "small, unbelievably black triangle." She got her shit together well enough to drive, and we went on to the astronomy meet.

The amateur astronomer friends were very skeptical about what we saw. And we were clearly rattled, so they were kind about trying to provide rational explanations. I remember drawing a diagram of the shape in the dirt with my generic Keds sneakers. But as the night wore on, many of them shared similar stories. The one I remember best is from a person who was camping in the inter-mountain desert who saw the exact same object, but that it was so large that it blotted out a good portion of the sky. They also claimed to have chased it for about an hour.

I've seen UFOs that I have no trouble explaining, but I refuse to explain them, so they are technically still unidentified

I have not

2002, Driving at night, across farm fields with trees around. My buddy in the car.

A very bright blue light crossed my path maybe 20 yards ahead of my car and maybe 10 yards up. It was moving fast, illuminating the ground in a spot light way and hugged the terrain. I could see the shape of a dark fuselage but could not describe it at all.

If it was a helicopter or jet or even prop plane it was absurdly close to the ground, at night, with obstacles around. We could not hear what we would expect (as if it were a helicopter). We had windows down, radio off. We were just chatting.

I slammed on the brakes and my buddy yelled "of fuck" and put his hands out at the exact same moment I reacted.

We watched it zip over the treeline and horizon, any chance to hear whatever noise it made was covered by the windows down wind noise, and the slammed brakes and gravel. We stood in the bed of my truck hoping it would come back and trying to rationalize it for like, almost an hour. Eventually we convinced ourselves it must have been a helicopter but in discussion days/years later, neither of us buy that. I've seen footage of an Apache helicopter flying low at night, but this seemed even lower still.

I can't claim anything about it other than it really freaked us out and was unlike any aircraft or drone I've been around since.

No.

I live in NJ; my friends keep saying they’re seeing them but I have not. I know someone that’s a cop near Princeton and they said there were 6 in the sky in that area just last night. Said they have instructions to detain anyone suspected of piloting any drone at which point they’re supposed to call it in to the Feds.

no

I saw what I think was a shooting star a few months ago in the night.

It flew not arched but straight.

I think it flew from horizon to horizon. Only catched it after 1/3 of the length so I don’t know for sure.

It was too fast for a man made object, because I didn’t hear anything and for it being too far away to not be hearable it would have been way too fast.

The light it shined was constant.

Have never seen a shooting star shine so constant and long and fly so straight.

This was 100-200km north of airbase Ramstein. I heard a few jets fly over and they were always loud.

Are you the NYPD? If so, yes. The guy who shot that CEO? I actually saw him. With my own eyes, I saw him abducted by a flying saucer! It scooped him up in a beam of light and zipped away. No need to bother looking for him, he's long gone. Light years away by now.

I once saw the moon... In front of the clouds.

I looked at my mom to tell her, and whe I looked back it was half the size and behind the clouds

Meteorology is so complex, most aerial phenomenon are hard to explain to a lay person

I'm sorry, there's ufo shit over nj? Hell, guess I should look outside.

Negative

I've seen 2. The first was when my girlfriend and I were sitting by the ocean alone after walking down a long dirt road. The sun had just gone down and we were just staring out at the water. We both see this star come up from the water then float around in circles for a few minutes then go back down into the water and disappear. That was about 7 years ago.

Also, last year I was getting off the highway on my way home and I see something huge just hanging above the river. It was just floating in place. There wasn't a quick way to get back to the river so I didn't go back to investigate, but I still hope I see it again one day.

I've never seen one, but one of my best friends saw one when he was three or four years old. It was the year 1999 and he was walking out of a McDonald's with his grandmother in a town near Conesus Lake (I specify the lake so I don't have to specify the town, though none of us live in the town anyways). He was looking towards the West in the parking lot, and as plainly visible as can be, a classic flying saucer was flying overhead in the distance. He recalls that he was too young to understand the beings controlling the spacecraft were not Muppets, especially since Muppets in Space was either coming out or already had not long ago.

I am almost 50 years old. I have spent my life staring at the night sky. Pretty much nightly I will spend up to an hour just looking up. I’m not an astronomer, just a dreamer.

I have never seen anything that was unexplainable. I have seen things I wasn’t quite sure what they were in the moment, notably the Starlink satellites, but never something that made me think it was a UFO/UAP.

Granted I’m a small town Canadian boy so perhaps the aliens don’t give a shit about me or my geographical region, but surely I’d have seen something by now.

I will note that the uptick in “sightings” have coincided nicely with the increased availability of hobbies drones.

Usually they're just U to me, and then I look up what they could be and then they become just FOs to me.