And I didn’t read books or magazines about them, didn’t think about them, didn’t “believe” or “not believe” in them - the whole UFO topic just wasn’t in my mind at all. Obviously I’d heard of them - this was the late 60s, and I had my own share (big plateful) of family and school problems, and just wasn’t expecting to see them or hoping to or anything of the sort. Went outside at night to take a walk, as it was summer and hot and the evening was nice and cool. Very rural, no lights from town or even any neighbors, it was an old farm, about 15 miles from the CA border.
The weird thing is I just went to a wooden pasture gate and leaned on it and - there the thing was, came pretty fast, just the way it left.
I had another odd experience right around the same time; might have even been that night. Won’t recount it on the thread; it wasn’t shady or icky or anything, just don’t want to put it out there for people to scorn.
And I never saw another one, and that didn’t disappoint me, I don’t look for them. But after that, I know they exist.
I’ve seen things in the sky that I can’t explain either, LJ.
One of the more interesting things I’ve seen was in 1985. I was driving from Los Angeles, to a company dinner in San Pedro, CA after dark. The sky was completely overcast and filled with cloud cover.
After I’d exited the southbound Harbor Freeway, and was driving on Pacific Avenue, I began to see bright lights zipping around in the clouds above. At first I paid little attention to them, thinking that they must be the reflections of searchlights bouncing off the undersides of the cloud cover.
At some point I stopped at a red light at a place that was a natural high vantage point, overlooking L.A. harbor. I noticed one light track from far south of me, racing to a point that was far north of my position. It dawned on me that no ground-based searchlight could possibly create a dot that small on the cloud cover over such a long distance.
As I was incredulously chewing on that sudden realization, I began to notice other lights doing the same thing. I suppose there were about a half a dozen of them, and all of them were covering distances that defied the searchlight explanation. Not only that, I couldn’t spot any light beams emanating from the ground, like any searchlight would put out.
The traffic light turned green and I continued on my way, alternately watching the road and the mysterious lights doing their acrobatic dance overhead.
When I arrived at my destination and got out of my car, I could still see a few of them far off in the distance, zipping back and forth.
Driving home from the company dinner, I tried to make sense of what I’d seen - posing the usual explanations to myself, but none of them passed the logic test. The lights I’d seen were moving at speeds, and doing maneuvers that I’d never seen any sort of aircraft perform. Being a military brat, I’d seen all sorts of jet aircraft operate, and at full speed. Whatever these things were, they outperformed any jet aircraft I’d ever witnessed. They also didn’t make a single sound.