NUFORC Sighting 23922

Occurred: 1990-08-15 02:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2002-07-26 13:11 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Sponk, NY, USA

Shape: Unknown
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted beams

Spherical object seen in Speonk (Hamptons area)

In 1990 I was 20, and living in Speonk, NY. Speonk is a tiny little town in the south east part of Long Island, right next to West Hampton. I had been out visiting some friends and was on my way home. It was about 2 or 2:30 am, and I was driving down Old Country Road. Old Country road is well named - it's long and windy, with long stretches of nothing but trees or open fields, broken up by the occasional home.

I was tired and taking Old Country faster then I should have (the friends I had been visiting lived about 45 minutes to an hour away, so I'd been driving tired for a while), and so I was annoyed to discover very slow moving traffic ahead of me just as I was getting close to Speonk. I was forced to slow down to about 10 or 15 miles per hour, and follow grumpily along behind the 3 cars ahead of me. I was actually just about to stand on my horn when I discovered why they were all driving so slowly - outside my driver's side window, on the north side of Old Country road, we were passing an open fiend, and hovering stationary in the field there was an object.

It was dark, so I never saw its exact shape, but there were blue, red and white lights seemingly affixed to its exterior, and bright blue cone shaped lights would occasionally fire out from underneath it, to scan the field below. At first, I thought it was a helicopter, but I couldn't hear the propeller noise, or feel any wind even though if was relatively close to the road (maybe 200 feet away, and slightly lower then the nearest treetops). I rolled down the window to get a better view, and to better hear any propeller noise, and that's when I noticed that it was rotating end over end (it HAD ends - even though I couldn't see it well, I had the impression it was spherical), that it to say vertically, and slightly horizontally as well. This removed any question from my mind that it might be a helicopter - I'd never seen or heard of a helicopter that while stationary, could slowly rotate upside down, while also turning horizontally and shining beams of light down at the ground below. Once my window was completely down, I also noticed that there was absolutely no sound whatsoever coming from the direction of the open field, and the UFO. Me and the rest of the strange 2:30 am traffic along Old Country crawled along, staring at the object in amazement until it was obscured by the reoccurrence of trees along the side of the road. We all just sped up and wend home, without ever saying a word to one another. The next day, I gathered some of my friends who lived in the Speonk/Hampton area, and told them what I'd seen. They laughed at me, and one of them reminded me that Calverton military base is just a few towns over. Those of us who live in the area have always been sure that the military is doing some thing over there that they don't want the rest of us to know about. There are signs on the fence surrounding the military base that say things like "Do not stop" (you're car), and such. He suggested that maybe the military was testing some new secret military aircraft. Maybe so, but I've never seen anything befo! re or si nce that day to suggest that the American military has aircraft that can do that.

In case you're interested, I'm the Senior Systems Administrator for a Long Island Technology company.

Posted 2002-07-26