NUFORC Sighting 30494

Occurred: 1965-02-15 17:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2003-08-03 10:08 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes to 1 hr
No of observers: 2

Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Shape: Oval
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

Object hovered over electric transformer for a few minutes, then quietly move over us. No sound. Aprox size of basketball held at arms

My mom and I were walking to the library around 7pm on a weeknight when we spotted a circular shaped object coming towards us from the south (I was 7 yrs old, my mom 27 at the time). It stopped over a transformer above us a few feet west of us and maybe 500-700 feet above us. It just hovered there for a few minutes. We thought it was either waiting for a plane to pass by or drawing power from the transformer. After a few minutes of hovering it slowly moved going east, passing over us heading east towards Lake Michigan. The thing that I can not explain is how quiet the object was. Nothing I know of can move, stop, change directions and move again so quietly, not a sound. The size of the craft was about the size of a basketball held at arms length, and I'd guess it was no higher than 500 or so feet. I remember the color being a yellowish changing to orange color that changed back to yellow, then orange. My mom remembers more lighting on its edges, like a ring of lights (I remember when we were looking at the object her saying that to me, and I never did see the ring of lights, she said it might be because of our height difference, I was a short 7 yr old then). My mom also believes that we lost as much as an hour that night. We went to the library to pick up a book and come home. Normally a trip like this would take 30 minutes at the most, but we were gone over 2 hours. My father asked what took us so long, and we didn't think we were gone more than 30 minutes and didn't know what to say. The next morning my mom contacted the Air Force and filed a report. She was made to feel like she was seeing things or saw swamp gas or an airplane. Now 40 years later, we still remember that night. I have a college degree with honors, a pilots license, a scuba license and am an amature astronomer. Nothing in my education or experience can explain what I saw that night. I've seen bright Venus, comets, planes, weather balloons, hot air ballons, flocks of birds flying high over the city at night that looked ! like a flying triangle, but nothing that can move so quietly like that object. Currently I'm involved as a volunteer searching for SETI with my computer at home. I find it interesting that so many people have seen UFO's and we prove them. It's as if they don't want to be proven. If we are dealing with a species more advanced than us, it might be impossible to know what to look for, since we don't know what it is we need to look for. It's like the indians looking for the calvery on horses, but the calvery come by jet instead, here and gone before you know what's going on. What my mom and I witnessed has yet to be explained, it was a UFO in every sense.

NUFORC Note:

Date may be approximate. We will invite the witness to have his mother submit a report, as well. PD

Posted 2003-08-04