NUFORC Sighting 23709

Occurred: 1998-05-16 02:20 Local
Reported: 2002-07-11 11:02 Pacific
Duration: 2-3min
No of observers: 2

Location: Wilmington (off coast of), NC, USA

Shape: Unknown


Dark figure buzzed our boat and it wasn't an airplane!

Off the coast of Wilmington(South)about 7-8 miles out from Frying Pan Shoals, we were night fishing for some Grouper and off in the horizon I thought I saw a glimmer of something out of the corner of my eye, but didn't pay to much attention to it being that I was re-baiting one of our lines. My buddy was lying down below trying to catch a quick nap, so I kept an eye on things (making sure we didn't get runover by some freighter or something). After, roughly 5 minutes went by I saw a glimmer of something again, this time I kept looking in that direction but couldn't make out anything, but I began to hear what sounded like a faint hum. NO lights, just an object or something off in the distance. I started getting paranoid at this point and decided to turn on our nav lights just in case another boat was coming, but really couldn't hear anything outside of a faint hum. I woke my buddy up, and told him what was going on, then told him to help me look for something off in the distance, because I knew something was there. My biggest fear was that another vessel was coming straight at us and we just couldn't see the lights yet. Finally, to the SouthEast of us we both saw what we thought at the time was a freighter coming because of the size, but we both remarked about that in the probably 10-12 years we've been fishing together,we have never saw a large ship at night with NO nav lights on. I started to grab my VHF radio to call and see if anybody knew what the hell was out there when all of the sudden there was this loud screaming sort of sound, not like a jet engine, but like a low pitch whine of a... I really can't think of anything, maybe a firework rocket inside of an empty dome stadium, sort of.

It came right at us and over us by only maybe 30 feet or so, but it happened so damn fast that it almost gave us a heart attack. We stood there, both of us dumbfounded, we could almost hear each others heart beating we were so scared. After, about 5 seconds or so we both looked at each other and yelled "What in the F--- was that." When we finally turned around in the direction of whatever it was went all we could see was that faint glimmer again, but suddenly the faint scream and the glimmer were gone. We radioed out to see if any other boats might have been close enough in the vicinity to see or hear anything, but naturally NO! Shape and exact size are hard to tell, when it came at us I could barely tell, but it was tapered looking and it did have a metallic type look but not shiny. If you can picture a small airliner buzzing you at about 30 feet thats sort of how it was. Not a terrible amount of wind to speak of as it came by, about like a car coming by you on the side of the road, enough to feel it, but not like it's going to knock you down or anything. Why didn't we report it sooner, I don't know. We both tried to come up with everything imaginable to explain it, and yes, we did consider telling somebody about it, well, we did tell a few people, but nobody of an authoratative type nature, but when my wife came home one night after a PTO meeting and she told me that somebody remarked" ---- been seeing anymore UFO's lately?" Well, I kinda let it go. I really don't say to much about it anymore except to my buddy, when he suggested that I go look up some stuff on the net and low and behold I found this sight. So I figured what the hell? Well, thats about all I got to say on the subject, but if anyone else saw the same thing that night/morning, post it on here so I can see it. Thanks!

Posted 2002-07-26

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