NUFORC Sighting 18597

Occurred: 2001-07-23 20:27 Local
Reported: 2001-07-23 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 min
No of observers: 2

Location: Wilsonville, OR, USA

Shape: Triangle

Black rounded corner pyramid, or triangle moving slowly without lights, sound, or visible means of propulsion, Wilsonville, OR.

I was driving West on Town Center loop road, looking to the South at 8:27 PM local time. With the exception of a few high level clouds (cirrus), it was a clear day, 80 degrees. Looking over the top of Fry's electronics in Wilsonville, I noticed what I first thought to be a black mylar baloon floating above the parking lot. I looked again, and noticed that it was stationary even though there was a slight wind moving approximately 5 knots to the Southeast. I looked again, and realized that it was not a baloon, but was much larger and farther away than I first thought. I pulled into the Les Schwab parking lot on the North side of town center loop, stopped the car, and looked at it in more detail. We get a lot of aircraft in our vicinity since we are essentially in the Northern approach to Aurora airport. I thought that this might be one of the larger hellicopters that are operated by Evergreen Aviation, a Sykorski Sky-Crane, or similar. What struck me is that this thing was hovering , then moved toward the South. There was no sign of the rotor on top (normally I can see the disk that's formed by the rotor), there were no lights of any type (strange, being in the Northern approach of the Aurora Airport, and within an hour of dusk), no sound, no protrusions out the side for wings, no tail, nothing. I called on my cell phone to a friends house where I had just left. I explained what I was seeing, (I told her as it was happening that it was hovering, then moving to the West, then moved upward, then away to the South again. I asked if she could see it from her house (less than 1/4 mile away). She ran out and looked where I was describing, I lost the signal from her cordless phone and drove back to her house. I didn't find her at home, and decided that I must have passed her somewhere on the road without seeing her. I back tracked my route and found her standing down the street pointing to it. She said that It had continued to move away to the South and that she had watched it for 5 minutes. I could no longer see it since it had just become a dot in the sky, and I had lost sight of it while driving. She continued to watch it, until we decided that it had dissapeared into the distance, and drove back to her house. The best way to describe its shape is the following: I was viewing it primarily from the end rather than the bottom of the object. It was roughly triangle shaped as viewed from the end, but had rounded corners on all three corners. I described it to my friend as shaped like one of the black licorice candies you get at the theater. When I was describing it to her on the phone earlier, I said it was like a pyramid shape, but with rounded corners. My friend said that she saw it moving straight up, but that when she viewed it, that it had not gone into the clouds, but had continued to move upward, and had made a jog backward to avoid going through the clouds she saw. We compared our timelines, and decided that the cloud I saw it go through was before she had arrived at a location where she could see it, and that when she watched it, it had continued to climb, but avoided the other clouds on its way up. Compared to all other aircraft we see in the Wilsonville area in and around airports, this thing moved really slowly. I have experience being in and around aircraft, have flown in and piloted light aircraft including helicopters, and can not explain what I saw. I think that several other people may have seen this object since it passed over Interstate 5 in the vicinity somewhere between Boone Bridge (Willamette River) and the Donald exit (5 miles to the south of Wilsonville). If you need additional information (although I'm not sure I can remember anything else of significance) you can contact me.

Posted 2001-08-05