NUFORC Sighting 31828

Occurred: 1970-07-11 20:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2003-09-25 11:56 Pacific
Duration: 30 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Lansing, MI, USA

Shape: Orb
Characteristics: Emitted beams

extremely high altitude, medium bright light emitting faint, glittery orange streaks in all directions

I’ve always been reluctant to outright accept the existence of extraterrestrial aerial craft, or UFOs. Even after seeing something a little strange when I was a kid that I’ve never really been able to explain. I think I was about 14 or 15 (it was a long time ago, maybe 1970 or 71). It was mid-Summer in my home town, Lansing, Michigan, and my best friend and I were playing softball with some other kids at the neighborhood school ground. When it started getting too dark for softball, we walked back to our street. When we got to my house, the stars had just begun to come out. I went in the house and grabbed a couple sodas and went back outside. We both laid back on the grass of the front lawn next to the driveway, looking up into the sky. At the same time, we both saw a stationary point of light that was a blue-green color. It wasn’t overly bright, but it was larger than any "star" I had ever seen, so it was distinctly noticeable, yet it seemed to be way, way up there amongst all the other stars. I would estimate (from memory) that a bee-bee held between the thumb and index finger at arm’s length would represent the visually perceived size of the object from the ground. Anyhow, we watched it for maybe fifteen minutes. During that time, it wasn’t doing much, other than pulsating slightly (twinkling). Then, we started seeing faint orange glittery streaks of light shooting from it. I remember saying something like, "Woah! Check that out!" and my friend said, "Yeah, man, I’m seein’ it too!" They were shooting out from the object in all directions, and each streak ended in a tiny white sparkle, except for some of them that seemed to be actually impacting smaller "stars" surrounding the object, as if it was shooting some sort of weapon at them. To a couple of imaginative teenage boys, this was pretty exciting stuff. But even then, I remember thinking, maybe it’s a satellite, or some other man-made spacecraft, and the streaks shooting from it are booster jets being used to man! euver the object or reposition its orbit. If only I had a telescope. The streaks were like fireworks right after they’re launched, when you can just make out a faint spark trail as they shoot through the sky before they explode. In fact, the scene was kind of like a miniature version of the finale of a major fireworks display where they shoot off a whole mess of fireworks all at once. This "stellar battle" lasted for another fifteen minutes or so, and then the thing simply blinked out. Just like that. It was gone. We told everybody we knew about what we had seen, and I’m not sure who believed us and who didn’t. Like I said at the beginning of this accounting, I’m a little skeptical about things like this. I’ve always figured that what we saw probably has some perfectly normal, "down-to-earth" explanation. (Not that I have any clue what that might be.) (???) Anybody else ever seen anything similar?

NUFORC Note:

Date is approximate. PD

Posted 2003-09-28