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Comment by sholladay | Hacker News Reader

I had an encounter with a UAP while I was with some friends in a park. We all saw the same thing. It was so black that its darkness was the only reason we noticed it against the night sky. It loomed over us, maybe 100 feet above the ground, and followed us when we walked away from it. It stayed for about 10 minutes and then flew away. It never made a sound, I never saw any lights, never felt any heat, but it was able to hover. It was hard to tell the shape, but roughly a disc, maybe a sphere.

I never reported it or anything, mostly due to not knowing who to call and lack of evidence (cell phone cameras were primitive at the time and it was too dark). We still talk about it occasionally, not really knowing what to make of it.

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I created an account just to chime in . Had the same experience happen to me around 30 years ago in a rural area. I think the only reason I was able to distinguish the round shape against the night sky was because there was almost no light pollution. In my case it was a small group of them flying in a v shape Formation just passing by.

Thanks for chiming in. It is oddly comforting to hear that others have had similar experiences. When it was happening, the first words out of my mouth were “You guys see that, right? I’m not hallucinating?” It was so obviously not normal. I rubbed my eyes, questioning whether it was me or not and it was a relief when they saw it too.

The size of the one I saw was large and it was already extraordinary and alarming. A formation would be astounding.

It is very difficult to estimate the sizes of objects in the sky. I once saw an odd machine-like object in the sky of Shanghai, China in broad daylight. I thought, why is nobody concerned, or even looking? After awhile I saw it sway a bit and realized it was an anchored kite. I thought it was huge but it was just close. At night it lit up like this: https://youtu.be/O_UrmvcJ9T0

Thanks for going against the HN grain and submitting a description of this experience. For a site with so many well-educated users I am disturbed by the volume of comments that suggest that things like this only happen in the US, or they have only happened since WWII, they are only reported by military pilots, or that this can't be real because FTL travel is not possible without considering that it isn't even necessary nor has it ever been claimed in any account AFAIK. I first started reading about things like this decades ago (after Pascagoula) and over the years I have read a lot of reports filed with outfits like MUFON. I am open-minded about all this and willing to consider that some of it could be true. Personally I tend to believe older reports filed by people who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by making an extraordinary claim yet still chose to inform their peers about something that they saw or experienced because they needed to understand it themselves and if they told the story maybe someone somewhere could fill in the blanks for them.

Someone that I have known for decades told me a few years ago that they were part of a small group that had an experience with something similar to what you are describing. In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual. These are college educated people enjoying life in a rural area.

While in college, I also taped a story that a fellow student told one day. I always taped the lectures and transcribed them after class to help remember things and on this particular day the subject somehow turned to UFOs. I would have to replay the tape to know how the segue happened but anyway, if I remember right the professor commented about UFOs not being real and this student interrupted and told his personal encounter story. From memory, he was out with friends riding ranch roads across the part of west Texas where he was raised when one of them pointed out a set of lights over a part of the ranch where there were no roads, buildings, etc. They all saw the lights and decided to investigate and so they followed ranch roads towards them and as they got closer it was apparent that the lights were part of something really unusual and large that was not on the ground but was in the sky. As they got closer it zipped straight up and away and was gone in a couple seconds. I still have the tape but no way to play it. I always recorded over the previous day's lecture after transcribing but for that one I decided I would keep it and start another tape. I know this person to be an ordinary person who got a great education in geoscience and took that into a career with a multinational company eventually as a VP. He was always a no bullshit person.

In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual.

Sounds like ... a cloud? Combined with some kind of local changes in temperature/pressure/ionization sufficient to distract the animals for a bit? (I live partially in nature - sometimes the critters are very active; other times, one can hear a pin drop).

I would think that people who spend a large part of their lives outside working a small farm/ranch after their day jobs would recognize a cloud if they saw one no matter the time of day.

I acknowledge that a cloud would block the view of everything behind it but in this case I'm pretty sure it wasn't a cloud.

The thing is clouds sometimes have unusual formations, appear at surprising altitudes and move very quickly (or appear to, if one misjudges the altitude).

As I'm sure they've been told already. I'm not denying their perceptions; and of course I wasn't there. It's just that my threshold of proof for extraterrestrial vehicles is ... quite high.

And sometimes unexplained observations are just that -- unexplained.

I understand the high bar that people set for situations like this. I am a geophysicist by education. It wasn't clouds. They've seen a lot of clouds and stars etc. and grew up around machines and animals.

I left out some of the details on purpose since the whole story is not mine to tell. They told me because they knew that I had done a lot of reading about the subject when other friends had something odd happen to them and they hoped that my physics studies would help them understand some of it better.

Some things are just unexplainable with our conventional knowledge. Over time that should/could change. If we already knew everything there would be no more need for science as curiosity about unfamiliar things could be satisfied by a simple query of existing knowledge. It would be a boring reality with no novelty or mysteries. In the worst case, a small group of people would control access to knowledge, withholding key information that would empower the rest of the people by helping them understand how all the mysteries of the world fit together to form our boring reality where every question has a clear, unique answer. Luckily we are nowhere near that point and there are many things left to be discovered.

You’re welcome. FWIW, this is getting a lot more upvotes than I expected. Maybe it’s just that there is a lot of traffic on this thread. But it could be that a lot other people have had similar experiences and just don’t want to talk about it. I can certainly relate to that - there are some people in my life who I haven’t told simply because of what they might think. It’s easier to talk about with strangers or super close friends.

I think you are close when you propose that other people who have had an experience like this are not willing to share because society stigmatizes them so that in the end, only those who knew them at the time or those who have become trusted friends ever hear the story.

This is certainly true for the people that I know. With the exception of the fellow student who felt compelled to tell his story, almost every one of the others that I know avoids talking about it and will even try to deflect conversation if there is anyone who hasn't already heard about it present.

One old friend still regularly communicates with me as I am one of the only people they trust to be non-judgemental since I knew them a long time before they had their experience. I get photos, short videos, descriptions of events, attempts to tie their experiences in with other reports, etc and so I dutifully check it all out to try to help them come to terms with what has become for them a lifelong process of dealing with an emotional trauma that ended up stigmatizing them back in the small town where we grew up. Long-term friendships are critical for helping people manage some of these experiences.

Events like this are relatively rare and so it is easy for someone who doesn't personally know or who has never personally had an unusual event happen to automatically default to the conclusion that the one reporting the event has some mental issue, is unreliable, etc. Another poster suggested that somehow the subjects of one thing I mentioned must have been confused by clouds. People look for the most likely explanations and tend to ignore the fact that many of these observers have more than enough experience to understand when they are seeing something remarkable. I can say that I know several people who have had strange things happen in their lives and that among that group there is not a single one who actively went out looking for that to happen. All were just ordinary people and some were still in grade school. I am open-minded about what has happened to these people and in some cases I saw the immediate changes in their personality and demeanor. Something different happened to them. I am not qualified to say what it was but I know it was not something that anyone would consider normal. I'm just trying to be a friend to them - a sounding board when they find themselves thinking about it again.

What year? Fits the military drone narrative.

This would’ve been around 2010-ish. I could maybe buy that it was a stealthy military drone, although I kind of doubt any drone is that big or stealthy. But then, why would a military drone be interested in some random young adults hanging out in the park? I considered that it might’ve been testing the limits of its stealthiness. But then why did it hang around after we started talking about it, pointing at it, and trying to record it? No, it felt a lot more like we were being studied. Especially in the way it followed us. Slowly, smoothly, and with a little distance.

Definitely crazy any way you look at it; something was observing you, whether man or otherwise.

I personally could buy the "autonomous alien probe sent 10,000 years ago" narrative, but just seems like we'd have more concrete, widely distributed evidence by now.

wow.

make drone of it

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