NUFORC Sighting 20167

Occurred: 2001-11-13 18:45 Local
Reported: 2001-11-13 23:47 Pacific
Duration: 2-3 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Studio City, CA, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

Night time triangular UFO sighted at close range flying very low and very slow over a major, busy, metropolitan area.

Just after 18:45, my wife and I pulled onto Ventura Blvd. from Radford Ave. heading west. There is a traffic light that you have to stop at immediately on Ventura Blvd. and I noticed what I thought at first was an airplane in the night sky to the front of me and to the right. But then I thought it was too low and too slow to be an airplane so I pointed it out to my wife and asked her what it was. Then I noticed that it was very low and very slow and very close, so close that there was no way that it could have been an airplane but it did not look even remotely like a helicopter. As it got closer it slowed down to a crawl and could make out more of the lights and the shape and it and all of the lights were brilliant white, steady and not pulsating and the object was definitely triangular in shape. The traffic light turned green and not wanting to lose sight of it, I pulled into the gas station on the corner of Ventura Blvd. and Ventura Pl. and was now looking at it through the windshield of my car as it passed over the rear of the buildings right across the street . I had rolled down my window to see if I could hear anything and my wife rolled down her window to lean out and look at the object. Neither of us noticed any sound coming from the object! It had now come to a complete stop and hovered for just a few seconds and then it accelerated smoothly and turned to its left and departed in a generally north-easterly direction. I turned right onto Ventura Pl. to keep sight of it and had to stop at a traffic light again as we watched it fly over the TV studio and out of sight. When first noticed, it would have been near to being over the intersection of Laurel Canyon Blvd. and Ventura Pl.. When it hovered, it looked like it would have been over the buildings between Ventura Pl. and Hoffman St.. When it departed it looked like it flew over the guard shack of the nearby TV studio at Hoffman St. and Radford Ave.. Its direction of travel was almost due east until this point when it started turning! north b efore we lost sight of it over the buildings and trees of the studio. We went to the guard shack and asked the three security guards in it if they saw the object and none of them did. It was a cool night and they were all inside. We noticed that while they had a terrific view of the area where the object flew, their window's reflections of the brightly lit interior made it very difficult to see outside. When the object accelerated and turned as it departed, it never wobbled or tilted and did not bank as it turned. It was like it "skated" away on a perfectly flat surface. I would guess its speed when last observed to be about 50 mph. There is a 12 story tall bank building at the corner of Radford Ave. and Ventura Pl. and this object was less than twice its height in altitude. I would estimate it to have been 200 ft above ground level. Also using the building as a reference, it think the sides of the object were about 60 ft from tip to tip. I think the trailing edge was not perfectly straight but may have bowed out or a very shallow point. There was a bright light near each tip of the triangle but the front tip was not quite as bright or as large as the lights the rear two lights. There was also two panels of lights near the center that ran parallel to the center-line of the object and were side-by-side to each other. Later we watched some airplanes taking off from the nearby Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena airport flying overhead and there was no way of confusing them with what we observed. Our location was around Lat: 34.143, Long: -118.393 according to mapblast.com. When we got home I checked the weather at the airport and it was was clear, 73% humidity, 49° dewpoint, 58° windchill, 30.08s barometer, N4 wind average, NW20 wind gust and 58° temperature at 20:14 hours. I think it was in the mid 60s temperature-wise during our sighting but everything else would be close to the conditions we experienced.

I was the Assistant State Director for one of MUFON's state organizations for many years before moving to California and my wife has investigated UFOs and had her first sighting in 1987. We both sketched what we remember and will scan the images and email them to accompany this report.

Posted 2001-11-20