With the recent talks of UAPs because of the current events over the UK and New Jersey, I’d love to hear your experiences.

  • GCanuck@lemmy.world
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    3 days 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.

  • Wiz@midwest.social
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    5 days ago

    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.

  • Transient Punk@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    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.

    • Orbituary@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I saw something similar as a kid in the 80s. I was in bed and turned around so my feet were against the window so I could look out at the stars. An object, brighter than the stars, was moving downward. It then stopped, shot across the sky, went up, back left, then abruptly rocketed to the right - east (thinking about it now).

      I woke up my parents, but they told me to go back to bed.

      This obviously preceded the advent of drones and was too fast and high to be a helicopter. I lived in St Pete, FL, which is across the water from MacDill Airforce Base. It’s possible that it was military, but how could anything from that era do this?

      I’m 48. I still think about this.

      • Ceedoestrees@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I saw something similar as a kid. My buddy and I were walking back from a snack run in the early, orange evening and saw a bright light about midway from horizon to directly above, westish. We argued which planet it could be (both of us huge nerds) when we saw it get brighter, much brighter, then shoot off like a meteorite.

        After debating it late that night, and wondering for months, I learned about atmospheric refraction and other phenomena that can mirror objects and lights, even ones on the ground. Even though it wasn’t a UFO, it sparked an appreciation for meteorology and physics at an early age.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    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.

  • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    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.

  • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    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.

  • Rixonomic@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    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.

  • 8000gnat@reddthat.com
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    5 days ago

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

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    “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.

  • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.