NUFORC UFO Sighting 181756

Occurred: 1976-02-15 20:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2024-05-30 16:32 Pacific
Duration: 10 seconds
No of observers: 1 - Military

Location: Pleasant Hill, AL, USA
Location details: The location marked on the road is approximate. We were driving from Selma to Greenville.

Shape: Unknown
Color: White Light
Estimated Size: Apparent diameter of the moon at 50-100 yards.
Viewed From: Land
Direction from Viewer: Since we were traveling in an overal SSE direction, the object was most likely roughly NNW of the ca
Angle of Elevation: 50
Closest Distance: 50-100 yards.
Estimated Speed: 60 mph
Characteristics: Emitted beams

Bright white light roughly the same apparent size as the moon was following our car. It emitted a rod of red light then vanished.

I was riding in the back seat of the car with my siblings, with my parents in the front. We were driving at night on a country road at night over relatively flat terrain. I was absent-mindedly looking out the rear window of the car and watching what I thought was the moon as it appeared to follow us. The sky was low overcast, and the shape of what was making the light was somewhat obscured, but the general size and fuzzy shape of it were such that I assumed without any hesitation that it was the moon. Feeling bored, I turned around and looked out the driver's-side passenger window and saw another light of the same size at 90 degrees to what I had just seen. I have a sense that I got enough of a glimpse through the clouds that I was sure it was the moon, which is why I listed only one craft. But while this is one of the clearest memories of my life, I cannot remember with certainty whether I actually saw any lunar features or not. In any case, I knew that there couldn't be two moons.

I should add that it only took a couple of seconds or so for me to turn around and look out the passenger window. We were driving down a country road at a minimum of 55 miles per hour. So to see this second light positioned where it was, my father would have needed to make a dangerously (impossibly?) fast turn that would have tossed all of us around. (No seat belts on---this was the 70s!) This is all reasoning after the fact. At the time it happened it was just perceptually/intuitively obvious that they couldn't both be the same light.

I stared at the light outside the passenger window for a second or two, and then spun around quickly to look out the rear window again. The light was still there moving behind or inside the clouds, staying at the same angular position to the car as it had. After no more than a few seconds, a red object shot out from the white object in the clouds, I briefly got a good look at the red object and then both it and the white light disappeared.

The red object shot out to the left and downward at about -20 degrees. From front to back it was roughly 1/2 to 2/3 the diameter of the white light. It was very simple and very beautiful, but still probably the strangest thing I have ever seen. It seemed meteor-like, but it's outline was perfectly sharp and geometrically perfect, even though it seemed to be nothing more than light. The leading part was a circle or sphere, with two "rods" trailing behind. The rods joined the sphere at tangents that could be drawn by drawing a line at 90 degrees to each rod and passing through the center of the circle. The rods were equal in length. Using the length of the red object as a length of measure, it and the white light disappeared instantly when the red object was 1-3 lengths away from the white one. There was no sense whatsoever of them accelerating away, they just instantaneously vanished from sight.

The event was purely visual with no sounds, disturbances to the vehicle, etc.. My family wasn't aware of anything until I shouted "I just saw a UFO!" I don't remember either any marked interest or disbelief on their part.

Posted 2024-06-11