The definition of a UFO is an object in the sky that cannot be identified. The old adage, proved by MUFON every day, is that 90 to 95 percent of all sightings are unrecognized or misidentified terrestrial phenomena or hoaxes. Its the remaining percentage that keeps the investigators at MUFON going and some of those cases are truly incredible.
I still don't know where to classify my first UFO.
Of course this is the UFO that I saw myself.
I was twelve years old. I had gone to the grocery store with my mother in her old '53 Chevy. We lived on the northwest side of Marion County in Indiana. since this was before UNIGOV it wasn't Indianapolis yet. In fact our house and the country road we were driving home on was surrounded by farm fields.
We were driving west when I saw it though the windshield. IT was a disk or sphere about the size of the full moon but not as bright, hanging low in the western sky. I thought for a moment that it was the moon but it was in the east behind me. Then I noticed that the object was descending faster than the stars. I watched it passing them. While this was happening we were traveling toward the object at forty miles an hour. My mother was always terrified of exceeding the speed limit. Before we reached the road we lived on the object finally disappeared behind the trees of a nearby woods.
I had already devoured two books by Frank Edwards, Stranger than Science and Strangest of All. I was excited and wanted to immediately go to where the object came down and investigate. My mother of course forbade this. I might of disobeyed her and sneaked out but I, at twelve, had no access to a vehicle and I had no real idea how far away the object really was. The matter remained unresolved.
The object appeared perfectly round and could have been spherical. It was illuminated from the inside but was easy to look at and not as bright as the moon. It took about five minutes to descend from about thirty degrees. All of this is from my memory. No measurements were taken.
The only plausible terrestrial explanation I can think of is an illuminated weather balloon. It would have to have a light source inside it that would illuminate it uniformly rather than on single side like a flashlight. In order to descend in the manner that it did it would have to be tethered and was reeled in. If this were true I would have expected it to wobble a little in the breeze. I bought several surplus weather balloons from Edmund Scientific when I was a kid and experimented with them. Even when filled with air they are the slaves of the slightest breeze.
I still don't know what I saw.
©2010 David A. Henninger
