NUFORC Sighting 54447

Occurred: 2006-07-15 22:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2007-01-04 10:46 Pacific
Duration: 3 Minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Salem, WV, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted beams

Triangular Shaped Object Seen on U.S. Rt. 50

This happened quite a few years ago, but I remember the details perfectly. My girlfriend and I were traveling on US Rt. 50 heading east from Parkersburg to Clarksburg. We were passing through (around) Salem when I noticed a large triangular-shaped object in the sky just above the horizon. At first I thought it was an oil-rig on top of the ridge (a common sighting in WV), or a cell phone tower, but I had made that particular drive hundreds of times and felt as if something was unusual, so I dismissed both of those notions. I woke my girlfriend and asked her if she recognized the object in front of us; she didn't. The object was vertical, at first, with bright red lights in each corner. Immediately after waking my girlfriend an extremely bright white light came on in the middle of the object, seemed to make a sweeping motion, and eventually "highlighted" us for a brief period of time. This made both of us nervous, but not particularly scared. I had to look down at the road and when I looked back up it was floating horizontally above us. When I looked down at the road again and back up it had disappeared. The object never seemed to move while I was looking at it, nor did it make any sounds. I originally thought it was a helicopter but dimissed the notion when I realized it had to have been within 100ft. of us and not making any sound whatsoever.

Both my girlfriend and I were fascinated with the unusual sighting and had thought about calling the regional airport in Clarksburg to see if there were any aircraft in the area at the time. We never did and never really talked about it the remainder of the time we dated.

I probably wouldn't have really thought about it much more until I watched a UFO special on TV sometime in 2001. They were discussing a case and had an artist's rendering and animation of the exact same object that I had seen. Since then I've told the story to some people, always siting what I saw on the television special.

NUFORC Note:

Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD

Posted 2007-02-01