NUFORC Sighting 54400

Occurred: 2006-12-14 09:30 Local
Reported: 2007-01-03 19:46 Pacific
Duration: 7 seconds
No of observers: 0

Location: Summit, IL, USA

Shape: Circle

Midway airport area, sphere or disc hovering and then accelerating rapidly

At approx 9:30 a.m., I was driving northbound (inbound to Chicago) on Hwy 55, The Stevenson Expressway, approaching the Harlem Ave exit ramp. In the sky, perhaps at a 45 degree angle or so from me and apparently at least 1000 feet up or so, I noticed an object. I would estimate it's location as being directly above the area of 54th Street and Oak Park Avenue, possibly somewhat farther east-southeast. I noted that it was black and round, not much larger than a BB at arm’s length. My first thought was that I was looking at a bird or an airplane end-on, but it quickly became obvious that it was neither. There was a solid gray cloud cover, the shape of the object was starkly visible, and wings if they existed would be clearly seen. No plane would be ascending towards or descending away from nearby Midway Airport (about two miles east-southesast of there)so steeply at that altitude.

By now I had viewed the object hovering in the sky for about five seconds. Suddenly it bolted, at a bit of an angle right-to-left, headed roughly eastbound and upward, toward the clouds. The black circle rapidly shrank into a pinpoint dot and disappeared into the clouds, clearly moving upward and away very fast. It took less than two seconds for it to accelerate out of sight. I did not see a hole in the clouds where it entered the solid cloud ceiling. My impression was that it was disc-shaped because of the flat appearance of the black (no shading at the edges like you'd see with a sphere).

The only reason I saw this object is that I had a shocking daylight sighting of a large craft back on November 9, and since then I’ve been scanning the skies every chance I get, hoping to see another UFO, which amazingly enough I did. These two sightings were very different, however.

Truthfully, I’ve been reluctant to post this sighting, as I’ve been discouraged since my previous experience. Since I was alone at the time, and I'm not a pilot or a police officer, it seems that I might not be qualified enough to report that a gigantic, very clearly defined black rectangle which I observed at length, slowly flying in high-visibility conditions before it camouflaged itself, is not a “weather phenomenon” or some other nonsense like that. Even though I’m in my 40s, a stable family man with a science degree, that’s lived in the Chicago area with it's teeming air traffic basically my whole life, to boot. Worse still, you feel you can’t discuss it with anybody, because even your closest friends or family members will think you’re a nut case or want to come up with some ridiculous debunking. If I had gotten photographs, those either wouldn’t have been good enough, or they would have been too good, i.e. fake. So the whole process of seeing and reporting a sighting is really very frustrating, even though I’m joined by tens of thousands of other witnesses.

Posted 2007-02-01