NUFORC Sighting 05966

Occurred: 1973-10-12 19:00 Local
Reported: 1999-03-19 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 10-15 minutes
No of observers: 5

Location: Birmingham (just south of), AL, USA

Shape: Disk
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Left a trail

Glowing Green UFO seen by myself (mom) and my 4 children very low over our car on a Friday night in Alabama in 1973.

I was listening to Mr. Davenport on Jeff Rense's show tonight, (3/19/99) and heard him say that he does want "old" UFO sighting reports to add to the data banks. I thought of calling in to the show, but decided to write it down instead. I thank you for this opportunity to tell what my children and I saw over 25 years ago. On October 12, 1973, our family consisting of me, my husband, our sons aged 14, 13 and 9 and our daughter aged 7, were nearing the end of our 4 year residence in Birmingham, Alabama. We were packing for a move to Scottsdale, Arizona, and on that day my husband was away on a trip to Arizona to set up details of the move. It was Homecoming for my oldest son's highschool and he and his next younger brother wanted to go to the football game. Just after 7:00 pm I loaded all four kids into the LTD station wagon for the 2 mile drive to the stadium. My daughter was in the front seat with me and the 3 boys were in the back. Our street was a long one-block cul de sac on the side of a hill. When leaving the street you have to climb up a steep incline, south, to the main cross-street at the top. The 2 streets form a "T." Across the intersection from our street was a heavily wooded area with no visible houses or lights. Our duplex was about halfway down the block on the east side of the street. Shortly after I pulled out of our driveway and headed up the hill, a huge, green-glowing hamburger lifted out of the trees across the intersection and slowly moved toward our car. Because of its low altitude and the steepness of the hill, the sight seemed to fill up our whole windshield. I called it a "hamburger" because that best describes the shape of the craft as I remember it. It appeared to be a solid dark metal ship with a row of lights and/or windows around the middle. The whole UFO was surrounded by a luminescent green mist. As it moved, some of the mist was left behind. As you can imagine, we were stunned and terrified. Thankfully, I did not lose electrical or engine power in the car. I turned left into the closest driveway, whipped that station wagon around as fast as I could, and headed for home, all the while screaming to the kids, "Is it following us?!?" They were as hysterical as I was. This thing was monstrously close. Within seconds I had pulled into our driveway and all of us got out of the car to look at the UFO. It had risen a bit higher in the sky and changed direction from its original northerly path. It was now slowly drifting to the southeast, leaving green mist in the sky as it went. There was NO sound. I ran to the duplex to the south of our building and pounded on the back door. When the young woman tenant came to the door I excitedly told her to come out and see what we were witnessing. Of course, by the time she came outside there was nothing left to see but the green mist. My kids had been keeping it in sight and told me that it just suddenly disappeared. The mist stayed suspended in the sky for several minutes before dissipating. I do not know if there was anything of substance that might have fallen to the ground for collection. I certainly saw nothing the next day in the daylight. I herded my children into our house and attempted to calm them (and myself) down. I gave them all paper and pencils and instructed them to draw what they had seen. (Those drawings were long ago destroyed, but I do remember that they were all remarkably similar.) I got out the phone book to try to find somebody to tell what we had seen. Nobody. In 1973 I knew nothing about MUFON or any other UFO research entities. So, I called the nearest municipal police department in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. (We did not live within the city limits of Birmingham.) The polite, but obviously amused officer who answered the phone told me that he had had no other reports of odd things in the sky, and that what we had probably seen was "an atmospheric gas bomb set off at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida." I did not buy that explanation then, and I don't buy it now. I cannot imagine that such a thing would have obvious solidity and lights or windows. Within a couple of weeks we left Alabama. Because I was so busy with the details of our move I did not have time to do any investigation of the wooded area out of which that thing rose. I was nearly 7 years old at the time of the Roswell crash and remember my mother telling me about it at the time. My interest in UFOs began then, but there was always a bit of doubt in my mind. That doubt was erased on the night of October 12, 1973. I remember that the first thought that popped in my head when I saw it was, "They really DO exist!" Our children each reacted differently to the adventure. My youngest son was so traumatized he will not talk about it to this day. The other boys and our daughter don't mind UFO conversations at all. My oldest son has been known to tell about the experience at the drop of a hat. Our daughter was affected the most by the incident. She had encounters with UFOs and/or ETs after that time, and may still be experiencing strange incidents to this day. She has some conscious memories that are very disturbing. We had no "lost time" that night. After we had calmed down a bit, I actually put everybody back in the car and took the boys to the game. I don't know how I did it. I told them to ask people in the stands if they had seen anything, but of course they didn't do it. sure they didn't do it.

Posted 1999-04-02