NUFORC Sighting 36112

Occurred: 1996-10-06 22:00 Local
Reported: 2004-04-10 00:22 Pacific
Duration: 45 MINUTES
No of observers: 2

Location: Fire Island (Long Island), NY, USA

Shape: Other
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted beams

Fire Island up close encounter with a UFO.

It was the end of the summer season and the island was mostly vacated. A friend and I were walking on the beach in an eastward direction. He spotted a light coming from the northwest over the Great South Bay. It was a moonless night. He kept and eye on it as we strolled along, his hobby was identifying airplanes by their landing lights or sound of an engine. As the object got closer it was easier to see. It was low and slowly coming in our direction. It looked flat at first then came closer still so that we could see slightly under it. From beneath it we noticed a blue flashing light striking the water. It ticked when it flashed. It was going about 5 miles per hour and as it got to shore, over the forested reserve between the Pines and Water Island the blue light stopped. We couldn't hear an engine...nothing. It was moving towards us and I panicked running up a small dune and dune fensing to one of the homes where I saw a man watching tv. I looked down at Ken and he wasn't following or responding so I went back down and yelled to follow. He grabbed my wrist and pushed me into the dune as the craft moved overhead. We huddled together in shock...at least I was. It had a 90 degree, cone-shaped nose, a swept back wing and deep body. I estimate it was 400 ft wide by 200 deep (nose to tail). At that time I lived in a a 20-story building on Sutton Place, in Manhattan, so I used that scale to quess the dimensions and hieght of it. It was approx. 20 stories overhead. The back end was arced slightly into the body. It was dark grey or black. The color was hard to see, however the shape is burned in my mind since the starry sky defined it so clearly. It continued to move and when it got to the southern (beach) shore of Fire Island it stopped. No sound, no engine noise, no vibrations, moving at 5 MPH... it just stopped in mid air over the beach. By this time we could see the rear of it and Ken said, "Look at the pattern of lights." There was a small red light in the middle rea! r and two white lights at eithther end. They blinked red, red, rt. white, red, lft white then the white light moved across to the other white light across the rear. Then we saw an amber light, like the ones on the helicopters that patrolled the east river sometimes. I said, "Thank God it must be the National Guard." It got closer, but we heard no sound. It was a round, glowing, amber light, the color of a glowing flame. It was about 12 in diameter, I think. The nose of the ship was still pointing southwest. Suddenly the amber light collapsed. It disappeared. Then the large craft, on it's axis, pivoted pointing its' nose due south. It moved forward until it was over the ocean and the blue flashed started up agin. We sat there watching it move towards the horizon flashing the blue light every 40 feet or so as if it was mapping or searching for something. We walked back to our hosts house. On the way I kept asking Ken what he had seen. I wasn't sure if it had happened so I asked him if he had seen anything on the beach. I was unhappy to hear that he had seen somthing. I asked him to describe what he saw and to my dismay he did. We went back to the house and told our friends. Of course, I was in shock and couldn't sleep that night. I wanted to know what I'd seen. Ken slept all right. When he got up I asked him how he got any sleep at all and he said that he'd seen one before as a child on his parents woodlands in Ohio. That wasn't what I wanted to hear.

At that time I was Chief Operations Office for a large furniture company in Manhattan. My friend was studying to be a personal trainer. I've always wanted to report the incident. I've told some close friends about it. I spent the next three months reading UFO literature. I needed to define what I'd seen. My life chnaged. NYC was no longer the center of the Universe. Everything seem so insignificant.

Thank you, ever so much, for the opportunity to share my experience.

Posted 2004-04-27

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