Members' UFO Encounters: Stories and Discussion.

[JJB]

As suggested, this thread is for members who want to share their personal UFO/UAP sightings and experiences.

Feel free to share what you witnessed, when and where it happened, what you initially thought you were seeing, and any details you consider relevant.

The purpose isn't to dismiss anyone's experience, but to provide a dedicated space where these accounts can be discussed, questioned, and examined critically. Seeing something you can't identify is a legitimate reason to investigate, but an unexplained observation alone doesn't establish what the object was, where it came from, or whether it had anything to do with extraterrestrials.

Share your experiences, and let's keep the discussion focused on the observations, evidence, and possible explanations.

 

[Leekster]

Mine was several years ago while flying west over New Mexico. I saw what appeared to be several objects orbiting a point at what looked like above the atmosphere. I watched them for about an hour as we flew west.
I thought they must be satellites but I had never seen any that behaved like that. I had only seen single satellites moving slowly across the sky. I did some research and found out I was seeing Starlink. The research also brought me to this website. At no point did I assume the unusual things I was seeing were supernatural or alien.

As an airline pilot I often hear in media how pilots are afraid to speak about unusual events like this or are embarrassed to report them for fear of retribution or embarrassment. In my opinion just the opposite is true. Most pilots are pragmatic and critical thinkers. Its almost built into the profession. Of course I'm sure there are a few outliers but I've never met a pilot that would feel afraid or embarrassed to report something interesting like a ufo.

I also can't help but think about the thousands upon thousands of flights airborne 24 hours a day, all over the world with two people being paid to look out the window at the world and how few reports of UFOs there are.

That leads me to think about the radars, satilites and multi-spectral sensors that are staring at every meter of the earth 24 hours a day that don't seem to pick up any aliens or hardly any difficult to explain phenomena.

Lastly, when people find out I'm a professional pilot and former fighter pilot they often ask if I have seen any UFOS. When I tell them "No, but I'm always looking." They tend to give me the side eye and say that the government probably wouldn't let me tell them anyway.

It's a crazy world.

 

[Mauro]

I once saw a white luminous orb hovering above the Padana plains and I showed it to my girlfriend too. Then I decided it was Venus, low on the horizon at sunset (I did not check... it was in the pre-Internet era).

And a few years ago I was in the Netherlands, on the highway, my wife driving and me on the passenger seat. After a while I saw something hovering motionless in the sky directly in front of me, a strange thing with many angles and white and red lights. I was sincerely baffled at first, then I realized we had come near Schiphol airport and the highway ran parallel to the runway, and I was looking to a plane incoming for landing, seemingly motionless due to perspective. Which was pretty cool.

 

[Todd Feinman]

At no point did I assume the unusual things I was seeing were supernatural or alien.

I've seen a lot of distant unusual things, lights in the sky, at no point did I consider those anomalous.

As an airline pilot I often hear in media how pilots are afraid to speak about unusual events like this or are embarrassed to report them for fear of retribution or embarrassment. In my opinion just the opposite is true. Most pilots are pragmatic and critical thinkers. It's almost built into the profession. Of course I'm sure there are a few outliers but I've never met a pilot that would feel afraid or embarrassed to report something interesting like a ufo.

Huh! I'm surprised. There was JANAP 146, when they were really flying around back in the day, and currently isn't it true that if a pilot reports a UFO but it can't be verified by radar, etc., it can trigger a psychiatric evaluation?
Wouldn't the person reporting it be thought of as having a screw loose by pilots like yourself? What if I was a school bus driver and I reported an encounter with a ghost vehicle? Huh! I know other some other librarians I worked with thought my claims were pretty weird, I would think. And I wasn't flying a commercial plane with a bunch of people on board. Now, military pilots are reporting them as we know.

That leads me to think about the radars, satilites and multi-spectral sensors that are staring at every meter of the earth 24 hours a day that don't seem to pick up any aliens or hardly any difficult to explain phenomena.

There are pics and footage we haven't seen yet, so we'll see. We know they are rare.

 

[JMartJr]

I haven't much of interest to report, other then illustrations of how "the moon illusion" (where the moon seems to be pacing your car) and a nice reverse example of a moving point of view can mess up an estimate of whether the thing in the sky is moving in the other direction:

Recently had a "anti-parallax" experience, the opposite of those cases where people think Venus is pacing them in their car. I was admiring a particularly bright "Venus" as seen driving along, but when I stopped at a stop sign Venus was revealed to be landing lights from a plane, their actual movement perfectly cancelled by parallax as it provided by foreground trees -- now that they were not "moving past," the movement of the plane was now noticeable.

As already told at: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/fr...n-comparing-accounts.10941/page-7#post-296213

And one owl that seemed HUGE until it passed between me and a tree branch or something, when its distance (and therefore size) was more clearly apparent!

 

[Leekster]

There was JANAP 146, when they were really flying around back in the day, and currently isn't it true that if a pilot reports a UFO but it can't be verified by radar, etc., it can trigger a psychiatric evaluation?

Absolutely not.
In my 35 year career,
I have NEVER heard of any pilot getting a psychiatric evaluation for something like this. Reporting a UFO.
The big triggers for evaluation are substance abuse, violent behavior and depression.
We have a lot of training and annual discussions on how to help our fellow aviators and protect our profession when pilot/colleagues have issues.

One thing most pilots have in common is that they love the view from the cockpit, sunsets, sunrises, other aircraft, aurora, lightning, St Elmo's fire, sprites. We find all these things fascinating.

I've seen dozens of balloons of all sizes and shapes at all altitudes. I'm actually concerned about running into them at night in South American airspace because they are so common.

I would love to see something cool like an alien spacecraft or UFO I can't explain. I certainly would not be embarrassed to share it with my fellow pilots or anyone interested.

I just think with the incredible number of flights all over the world and nobody has a decent video of anything more than a blurry thing moving around? That in itself is pretty remarkable.

 

[MapperGuy]

Huh! I'm surprised. There was JANAP 146, when they were really flying around back in the day, and currently isn't it true that if a pilot reports a UFO but it can't be verified by radar, etc., it can trigger a psychiatric evaluation?

I think this is an urban legend.

Pilots I am sure regularly see things they can't positively identify, so what would you have them call these objects?

As an urban legend it plays into the idea there are flying saucers everywhere, and the lack of reports about them is because people are afraid to report them. Thus lack of reports equals proof of their existence.