NUFORC Sighting 19033

Occurred: 2001-08-17 08:10 Local
Reported: 2001-08-17 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Fulton, MO, USA

Shape: Cigar
Characteristics: Aircraft nearby

Silver cigar over Central Missouri

This morning as my sons and I were outside preparing to get in the car, I heard an unusual sound which I have in fact noticed on several occassions in the past months. Certainly not highway noise, and while similar to typical aviation noise, somehow much more "otherworldly" sounding. This is such a subjective description, but is the best I can come up with. We live along a creek banked by steep cliffs and have a deep ravine originating near our home that opens into the creek in a break in the cliffs. I mention this because I believe this feature can amplify aerial noises. I will also mention that I have been an avid sky watcher for almost exactly a year now, my interest originally having been piqued by stumbling across info on the web re: anomolous contrails, aka chemtrails. Within a month or so of reading about them, they began appearing frequently in our skies, typically the result of what I would say, from the planes I have viewed, are military jets doing some kind of exercise. In any case, this morning the skies were almost pure blue, but typically upon hearing that unusual noise planes will appear and the skies slowly haze over... This morning something totally unexpected happened. A cigar shaped object appeared at an altitude just under the few clouds (cirrus) in the sky, slowly moving west to east. While the strange noise was coming from a distance through the ravine, there was no sound whatsoever associated with this craft. It was uniformly silver, with no wings and no windows that I could observe. It had no contrails coming from it. My best estimate as to its size would be that of a typical tractor-trailer only wider. It had the shape of a medicine capsule, therefore I would call it a cigar shaped object for classification purposes. Within approximately 2 minutes this slow moving craft ascended at perhaps a 15 degree angle and poof! disappeared from view. I have been thinking about it all day - it was so unusual. Within a minute of seeing this object, a military (I assume) jet ap! peared i n the sky emitting a contrail at about the same altitude. Back in March, I was driving near my home looking at lingering contrails and noticed a jet - traveling next to it towards its rear was a silver orb a bit smaller than the jet. I wished to observe this by following it in my car but had someone tailgating me, so I was unable to make a turn in order to observe more. Other than that sphere and the cigar witnessed this morning, I have NEVER seen anything like these craft before in my life and would rule out explanations such as "blimp", "weather balloon" or the like. I have never "believed" in UFOs but the sighting this morning, as well as the orb some months back, have me convinced that there are at the very least craft of whatever origin whose operating mechanisms are nothing like those the general public are privy to.

Posted 2001-08-20

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