NUFORC Sighting 180757

Occurred: 1983-06-04 22:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2024-03-08 08:33 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Jeannette, PA, USA
Location details: The craft was hovering to the west of the address reported, at approximately 40.352 N, 79.610 W

Shape: Disk
Color: unknown
Estimated Size: 150 feet
Viewed From: Land
Direction from Viewer: West
Angle of Elevation: 70
Closest Distance: 800 feet
Estimated Speed: unresolvable
Characteristics: Lights on object

Late evening sighting, lights moving around silent craft, shape of craft uncertain, sped away faster than eyes could resolve

In the late spring of 1983, sometime in early June, I was 8 years-old and my oldest sister was 18 and had just graduated from high school. We were sitting in the living room one evening at our rural home in southwestern Pennsylvania. I remember the evenings were still cool because we had long pants on, and the grass was dewy at night. My sister was watching TV and I was facing her, sitting on the carpet and drawing. Our living room had windows on the east and west side, with a giant fireplace on the wall in between. It was dark outside and must have been at least 9 or 10 pm. Our parents and our other sister weren’t home, so it was just my oldest sister and me hanging out. Suddenly, my sister said, “Oh my God. Come here. Look out the window!” I quickly stood up, turned around, and we ran to the west-facing window. This window overlooked a low valley at the base a short, north-south trending ridge that rose about a hundred feet above our vantage point. I quickly scanned the scene to see what was happening. I was expecting to see an animal or a fire, but what I saw was so jarring I couldn’t connect the image to any words I had. It was a band of individual white and red lights above the ridge, and they were blinking in slow succession (about 1 to 2 seconds per blink). As far as the size of the object (based on the length of the lights), as I relived this memory later and learned how to approximate sizes and scales of outcrops from afar while studying geology, I estimate it could have been between 100 and 200 feet in length, and about 300 feet above the ground. I don’t know if it was my sister or I who said we should go look at it from outside, but that’s what we did. We ran into the yard in front of the house and walked a little closer to the bottom of the valley. I remember thinking it might be gone by the time we got outside and was surprised it was still there. We stood there watching it in silence. It was motionless, besides the strip of blinking white and red lights, and it hung in the air like a fixed object. We couldn’t resolve the shape of the object because it was so dark out, and the lights weren’t especially bright or blinding in any way. There was no reflection onto the surface of whatever was holding the lights, like one would expect from a blimp or other aircraft. I couldn’t tell if it was making any noise. I noticed an almost imperceptible hum but didn’t know if the sound was coming from the object or from the tension inside my body. I’m not sure how long it stayed there, maybe a minute, because it was long enough for us to take in what we were seeing and record enough in our memory to discuss it later. Suddenly, the object began to move very slowly to the north, parallel to the ridge, which was to the right of our vantage point. We saw it creep along for no more than 3 seconds (about 500 feet at most), and then it sped off so fast that it effectively disappeared, and we could no longer see it or its trajectory.

Posted 2024-03-13