NUFORC Sighting 8318

Occurred: 1999-07-08 13:15 Local
Reported: 1999-07-13 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Crown Point, IN, USA

Shape: Other

My son and I witnessed what looked like a jet fly over our house, except that the arrow-like shape of it does not look like anything we can match with know jets.

At between 13:15 and 13:30 my son was walking from the garage to the house when he began calling me frantically to come outside to see a jet flying over. He said that he heard it coming and it had an additional sound like the whirring of a helicopter along with the jet sound so he waited outside for it to go overhead. I was amazed at what I saw, my first thought was that it had to be experimental. The entire craft could best be described as arrow-shaped and a silver-goldish color. Not a chrome silver but not iron gray either. It was flying fairly low like a plane in a holding pattern would do at a small airport. How high that is in feet I dont know. The jet was flying straight north, the direction helicopters fly over our house all the time and only just a little higher than that. It was the size of a medium sized commercial passenger plane. We watched it fly over for almost a minute before it was lost behind the trees, so it was not going fast. I did not hear the whirring sound my son heard, and we could hear each other talking so it could not have been very loud; no high-whining sound like a jet makes, and it was low enough to be deafening. I pointed things out to my son as it was going over and said, "now quickly go draw a picure of it before you forget what it looks like." The front of it was very much shaped like a wide arrow-head, rather than more pointed with what looked like antennas pointing towards the back from the two points. Then there was a very long middle section, disproportionate from the rest. Too thin and too long, and round like a pencil. It didn't seem to make sense. (We had time to talk about what it could be for while we watched it go overhead.) We didn't notice any markings or outside antennas on this section. It seemed to be completely sleek. The tail section was much larger than the front section by at least 3:1 and reminded me more of the stealth design in its shape only the edges were far less rounded. On the back I saw 2 round, large, black shapes (my husband said they sounded like thrusters, I though they were landing wheels but bigger) and I saw a little of what looked like cages on top of each side. (My husband said these sounded like intakes.) I remember seeing an antenna sticking up somewhere and fins sticking up on each side. The back section was more familiar and less remarkable than the rest of it. (The rest of it was very remarkable.) In fact the front of it looked so flat that it looked more like it had rudders on each side of a long pencil than anything else. The back was flattened also but not to that degree. Nothing like a cockpit was seen. I very much think it was some kind of (fighter?) jet and wonder if it was coming from a military base my son says is south of here. But why would it fly so low straight into the Gary, IN airport traffic and why at such a conspicuous time of day? We have been looking for something on line for a few days to see if anyone else has seen anything like it. We even looked at Boeing and Lockheed's homepages to see if we could get a clue as to it's design and origin and found nothing. We thought you might have heard something about it and it might explain some other sightings in the area that were less visible. I am a 38 year old mother of 5 children and my son is 17, working at a bible conference grounds and an avid computer enthusiast. I don't know if you can let me know anything about this, but we are very curious and would appreciate it it you could fill us in. Thanks for your time.

Posted 1999-07-14