It was the late 1960’s, early 1970, can’t remember the exact
date but I was probably 5 or 6 years old. I was sitting on my grandmothers back
steps; she lived right next to our house on Long Island. Afternoon, sunny, nice
day as I picture it. I can remember looking up and right above the trees, there
was a row of pine trees lining the yard, there was something hovering there; big,
gray, metallic looking, round disc like object. On the bottom of it was a ring
of fin like projections, going around in a circle. It hovered and then moved
slowly away from me, maintaining its altitude. The tops of the trees were
swaying as it moved above them. There was no sound that I can remember. It
started to moved off but I don’t remember anything else past that. I was very
young and it has been too many years now.
I have thought about that moment many times since then. I
remember years later drawing the object for my brother as we discussed what it
could have been. And now, I don’t know if it was real or imagined. It is very vague
in my memory but there’s something there. We lived close to the Grumman plant
in Calverton, and over the years I have speculated that it was some kind of
experimental aircraft. Grumman developed many of the military’s fighter
aircraft, along with being a major contractor on the Apollo Lunar Module. But,
would they fly an experimental craft over civilian airspace? Probably not…
What I saw was literally a UFO, unidentified flying object.
That doesn’t mean it was extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or a time
traveling ship. It just means I can’t identify what it was. Or, honestly at
this point, if it even existed. Many UFO’s are misidentified commonplace
things, aircraft, astronomical bodies, natural occurrences…and can be
identified with enough research and investigation. In 1910 a mysterious airship
was seen moving in the skies over east Tennessee. Many people saw it and even
“heard” the engines of the craft. It turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by a
local group of men that had released a large gas filled balloon that had been
ignited and set adrift. In 1966, many people in the northern U.S. witnessed a
large UFO, bright and clear like a full moon. It increased in size and then
slowly became a column as it disappeared. People, even pilots, thought this object
had landed and then taken off again. It turned out to be the release of barium
from a sounding rocket fired by Canadian scientists. With adequate
investigation, many sightings of strange phenomena can be explained. We have to
be careful not to jump to conclusions without the proper research. I have found
that there are a lot of “believers” in this field of study. People that will
assume it is extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or whatever, without the
proper investigation. Anyone researching this phenomenon must develop proper
scientific method, and not assume anything. Too many times I have seen
“ufologists” look at an event and say “it wasn’t a plane and it wasn’t a
meteorite so it must be an extraterrestrial scout ship”….WHAT!?...Realizing
that that was a bit if an exaggeration, you get the point. Skepticism is
healthy and necessary when studying unusual phenomenon.
I still can’t say what it was I saw in the skies above my
grandmother’s house that day. However, I can say that it is still unidentified,
still unusual, and still in my thoughts. I will probably never know what it
was, if anything, but not knowing and trying to figure it out is the fun part.
Truth is if I ever do find out what it was, I might be disappointed.
