NUFORC Sighting 19482

Occurred: 2001-07-06 14:00 Local
Reported: 2001-09-09 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 20 min.
No of observers: 2

Location: Allentown, PA, USA

Shape: Rectangle
Characteristics: Emitted other objects

rectangular object extended spiral tail (black and silver) and climbed to about 12k feet in under two minutes, no noise or lights.

My little boy and I were in our front yard when I saw a black rectangular object hovering about 200 feet high and perhaps 500 yards to the south east of my home. As we watched it the object began to drift to the west very slowly. Since it was a very bright day with good thermals possible I thought the object might be some kind of debris that had been lofted into the air by a strong thermal and wind. As we watched the object it grew a sprial tail that was at least as wide as the object itself and two to three times as long; this tail was black on one side and silver on the other. It began to climb very rapidly with the tail spiraling in a clockwise direction. Since it was in the local airport traffic pattern I called a report of flying junk into the ABE airport; they said they did not have anything on radar. Given the altitude and distance of the object, it must have been about 20 plus feet in length and at least six feet from top to bottom. The cloud base was about 12 to 15 thousand feet that day and the object climbed to cloud base in less than two minutes. I could keep visual contact as the sun reflected from the silver side of the tail. I have thought about this object nearly every day since we saw it and came to the conclusion that it was not just some kind of junk floating around for the following. First if it was something like a cardboard box, the rectangle would have become mishapen when the tail extended as that would have been part of the box. Second even in a boomer thermal I have never seen an object climb that fast (no whosh or whoom) it just climbed near vertical with the spiral tail flashing in the sun. If it had climbed in a thermal, my experience is that a free flying object would circle and float not just climb like this thing did. This object is without question the most unusual thing I have ever seen. I would be very interested in knowing if anyone else has ever experienced this type of thing and if they did identify the object.

Posted 2001-10-12