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The UFO in the photo at left is not the same one I witnessed when I was 8 years old, but something about it reminds me of what I saw that night looking out my parents' upstairs bedroom window. More than 30 years later, even as I forget what I did last weekend, I still remember the "craft" and all the details surrounding it as if it were yesterday -- I remember what my mom and I were doing at the time, what the weather was like, the shape of the ship, the lights, the sound, and the eerie feeling that surrounded the whole unearthly event.

It is not like me to remember childhood experiences and details like this, and because I do, it only tells me that this experience was a lot more significant than I considered at the time. For some reason I still can't explain, it has never left me.

Look, I'm not saying what I saw on that humid summer's night in Connecticut was a spacecraft carrying aliens from outer space. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I am open to the idea that life exists on other planets or it does not. Whatever. All I am saying is that I saw what I saw -- and what I saw was not a "weather balloon" or an airplane or a figment of a child's active imagination.

This craft was hovering only 20 feet off the ground in the field across the street from our house, close enough and clear enough for me to make out its exact shape. It was not the classic "saucer like" shape that would have been in my brain from most TV shows and movies of that time period, it was long and seemed to take on a triangular or rectangular shape, rimmed by bright lights. But most of all, it was quiet. There was no sound as the craft literally appeared before my eyes one second, moved stealthily across the field, and seemingly vanished the next.

Only recently did I discover that the shape I described has popped up in other UFO sightings over the last century. I also discovered that Connecticut, for some reason, has been something of a "UFO hot spot" over the years and that has not changed. According to the Mutual UFO Network guys who track all these reported sightings, the small state of Connecticut ranks number 8 in the nation for UFO sightings, and the number of sightings this past August in Connecticut skyrocketed to 38. Is it coincidental that I saw my UFO in August, too? No idea, but I certainly wasn't the only one who saw strange things in the sky that night. My mother saw them too, and the next day the newspaper reported dozens and dozens of other people had seen the glowing objects flashing around the sky, disappearing and then reappearing again.

My mother, while she saw the lights and could not explain them, does not remember seeing the ship in the field. I never saw it again, but neither did I ever try to look for it, either. Looking back I feel a little sad about that. People often say that you see what you want to see, believe what you want to believe, so it doesn't surprise me that an adult who is by nature more skeptical than a child would have no memory of it. Maybe the ship only showed itself to me and burned a hole in my memory alone because I was more open to the possibility.

Wow. I think there might be a lesson for all of us in there somewhere ... either that or it's just a goofy UFO story. I know what I believe. What about you?

What do you think I saw that night?

 

Image via chris_ford_uk/Flickr


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