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The original was posted on /r/ufos by /u/DavidM47 on 2024-10-18 23:43:17+00:00.
***long post warning, artistic impressions at the end***
I joined Reddit a couple of years ago just to talk to people about UFOs. I've had a lifelong interest in the UFO topic, but I did not see a UFO until I was in my mid-30s.
At the time of my sighting (2021), I had been sort of 'unplugged' from the UFO topic for several years, so I didn't report it to MUFON for almost nine months, simply because I'd forgotten that MUFON even existed.
However, I was following along as Tom DeLonge went on the JRE, then took the stage with Hal, Chris, and Lue to introduce TTSA, and I remember doing a double-take when I got the NYT alert on my phone in December 2017--knowing that the Times had never written a serious story about UFOs.
So, that's my definition of being unplugged from this topic. Still following the major stuff, but not doing active research or interacting with people about it.
You see, I used to be really into UFOs. I had the Internet very early, and much of what got posted to FTP servers and Angelfire websites back in the day was about UFOs. I wasn't yet a teen when the Phoenix Lights incident occurred, but I was already interested enough that I was legitimately devastated when I came back from a family trip and learned that the event occurred while we were out of town.
In the years following that event, cracks in that story (superficial though they may be) emerged. Living in the city and being UFO-curious, I was exposed to and watched a lot of witness interviews (all of whom, by the way, were standing outside at the time of the event).
It was remarkable how different their accounts were from one another. The big picture was the same, but there were serious discrepancies in the details - how far away it was, how large it was, how many lights there were, and--critically-whether you could see through the craft or whether it blocked out the starlight behind it.
Those who have studied the topic long enough know that almost every major sighting has holes like this, and almost every sighting you see posted on the Internet is either explainable or a hoax. The deeper you look, the less you find. If the Phoenix Lights wasn't a legitimate UFO event, it was hard to imagine what was.
Still, I followed along with interest. I couldn't help but feel that, if I'd had seen the Phoenix Lights, I would have been able to discern what it was and would already know the truth. The absence of any quality footage of that event was also a hint that perhaps obtaining it in the first place was not as simple as it seemed, eliminating a major argument of the skeptics.
In college, some friends and I had some vaguely paranormal/spiritual experiences, but I didn't associate that with UFOs and wasn't even familiar with the idea that there might be some connection.
I recall a friend, let's call him "Bruce," asking me, do you think this stuff could be related to UFOs? The question seemed out of left field. It would take almost 20 years to learn that the USS Princeton/Nimitz events were taking place at that very same time, not too far away.
About a year after college, Bruce and I were walking down the California coastline after a night of drinking when the sound of military helicopters came roaring up from behind us. Bruce pointed to an area over the water and yelled "Look! Those helicopters are going after a UFO!"
Indeed, a green orb seemed to be floating across the sky with 5 or 6 Apache-style helicopters chasing it. As we watched this cacophonous spectacle, I noticed the green orb was the same color as these green lights that all of the helicopters had on their tails.
Back at Bruce's apartment, I suggested that perhaps one of the helicopters had turned off all of its lights - save the green one - and flown ahead of the rest - making it appear as though they were chasing a green orb. I got the sense that Bruce accepted my prosaic explanation, but was disappointed. A pilot, he agreed that all of those aircraft should be equipped with red, green, and white lights.
That was not the sighting referenced in the title of this post. But that experience taught me something important: If you want to witness a UFO, you have to spend a lot of time outside.
Of course! It seemed so obvious, once you stop and think about it. You can't win if you don't play! The Phoenix Lights incident only became a mass sighting because a large number of people were outside to see the Hale-Bopp Comet approaching its perihelion. Those of us who spend most of their day indoors are not in the running. We don't even have a shot. But I wanted a shot.
That's when I made a decision. I would take long walks outside, when possible, as my way of getting regular exercise. The concept of low-intensity, high-duration aerobic exercise was already very popular, and I knew that I would be spending much of my waking life inside at a computer.
Did I take a long walk outside every day between then and my sighting? No. But in the 3 years leading up to my sighting, my walks became much more regular - several times per week on average.
In total, I estimate that I spent 600-700 hours walking outside before I saw something legitimate.
What's more, since my sighting (which MUFON closed as "unexplained"), my walks have become even more frequent, and while I've had a much more keen eye on the skies, I've yet to see anything else.
My walks had become more frequent -- not because I was increasingly interested in seeing a UFO due to the UAP Task Force and stories about AATIP, etc. -- but because I had moved to an area with a really cool lake, after briefly living in an area that was boring and very flat. So, I was kind of making up for lost time.
In fact, my interest in UFOs had waned further still. In law school, I began to suspect that the UFO topic was a tool of political manipulation. That was, admittedly, a convenient mindset to adopt. When you're married with kids, you don't really have time to read or talk to people about UFOs.
That is, unless you actually see one...
On the morning of my sighting, my mind was anywhere but UFOs. It was a week before an arbitration in which I had to defend a company and its owners against a million dollar fraud claim. My firm had been retained only a month earlier, and I'd just spent the last couple of weeks reviewing thousands of documents and a dozen deposition transcripts.
I had reserved the day of my sighting as Day 1 of 2 that I was going to spend writing the pre-trial brief. My mind filled with facts and arguments, I had not fallen asleep until after 2am. I woke up around 5:57am, before my alarm clock was set to ring. I didn't feel rested, but I was alert. I think I was somewhere in between REM cycles and I knew I wasn't going to fall back asleep.
Having put off my morning walk for longer than normal, I decided the best thing was to get an early start to the day and hit the streets.
I've estimated that I set foot outside at about 6:12am. It was early October, so sunrise was more than an hour away. The sky was perfectly clear, and I would later see that there was not a blip on the Doppler map for dozens of miles in any direction that morning. It was also near a new moon, so it was very dark.
I cut across my front yard and started walking along the sidewalk, heading slightly downhill. About 10-15 paces into my walk, I notice something to my left, in my periphery, like a twinkling star or a meteor.
I glanced up at it and saw that it was unusual enough to stop. Once my feet were planted, my body was fully still, and my eyes had focused directly on it, I detected that it was not moving, but totally stationary in the sky, not making any sound.
What I saw was a small glowing green orb inside of a larger, fuzzier reddish-orange orb. Initially, the green orb was about the size of Arcturus or Vega. It was distinct, and I believe what I was looking at was a metal craft, whose outer layer was in a plasma-like state and whose heat was so intense as to essentially boil the atmospheric gasses around it into a reddish-orange plasma. At its maximum size, the green part was about the size of Jupiter.
If you ever have such an experience, you'll learn that time slows down in this moment (I suspect due to adrenaline), giving you time to think many things. My first thought was now wait a minute, these are still just red and green lights. My next thought was that it might be a meteor coming directly towards me.
Over the next few seconds (as I was starting to assess what was going on), the green orb got brighter and brighter, which made it harder and harder to look at.
I'll be honest, in the moment, it kind of felt like this UFO was doing something to my eyes, like it was trying to divert my eyes from looking at it. But I think it was just very bright and uncomfortable to look at, sort of how you don't want to look directly at a clear or un-tinted Christmas tree bulb. Your brain will unconsciously try to make you avoid looking at it, and when you're in a state of hyperawareness, that makes your conscious mind feel like it is being controlled, because it is. Just one of those ways our brain plays tricks on us. It took me a while to piece this together, and I omitted this eye detail in storytelling until I figured it out.
Now, as the inside green light is getting brighter, the larger reddish-orange halo around it is getting larger too. The bigger it gets, the more detail I'm able to see.
...
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