NUFORC Sighting 53605

Occurred: 1978-02-15 10:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2006-11-25 09:32 Pacific
Duration: 130 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: St.Thomas (U. S. Virgin Islands), VI, USA

Shape: Disk

Visible in the mid-day

I was 11 years old, living with my mother in an apartment on the North Side of St.Thomas, in estate Rosenthahl. The North side of the island was very undeveloped at the time, so there were few houses nearby, it was mostly jungle or "bush" near our house.

My mother was out on the balcony watering potted plants when she called me to come look at something. I came out and saw a saucer like aircraft hovering almost at eye-level to us. Our apartment was aproximatley 500 to 700 feet above sea-level on the side of a mountain. Magen's Bay was to the left of our view and we looked out at a small hill just opposite of our building, about 400 feet opposite. On the other side of the small hill is now Mahogany Run gold course which, at the time belonged to St. Thomas Dairy and was a pasture.

The Atlantic Ocean is beyond.

It was a perfectly clear sunny day and the sun was behind us, we were looking due north. The craft was brilliantly shiny, like highly polished chrome and the sun glinted off of it, the rest of it appeared dark because it was in shadow. I was trying to figure out how far away from us it was; I think it was beyond the hill opposite of us, probably about a half mile away, hovering above the pasture, but visible to us over the top of the small hill.

Prior to this experience, I thought a spinning saucer shaped ufo was an absurd concept, but this was not spinning, and there it was before my eyes. It appeared disc shaped because of the way the sun was glinting off of it, but we were seeing its edge, from the side. It was like two thin pie plates one inverted on top of an upright one on the bottom. It was sleek and stealth. The lower portion in shadow was more pie plate shaped, with more vertical sides, the top was flatter. It was not mushroom cap shaped. It was not very large, about 15 to twenty feet in diameter. It made no sound. It was a quiet day and all you could hear were the birds singing.

The most remarkable thing about it was how it moved. At first it was absolutely still then it moved from left to right with unwavering precision, and back again and up and down a very little. It moved only about 20 to 40 feet to the sides, as if it were focusing or getting a better angle. It moved up and down only about 10 feet or so. Every movement it made was exact, no wobble, and it went from absolute standstill to movement with no acceleration or deceleration. It moved with phenomenal speed, from zero to super fast to zero again without any lurching. It stopped between left and right movements and stayed unmoving for a couple seconds, and I definitely had the impression it was observing my mother and I as we were watching it.

It stayed in the same area of the sky, right in front of us for the majority of the time, and then moved further to the left, as if it was checking out something else and stayed there for only a few seconds more and then it abruptly took off in an ascending arc, going north-west from horizontal to about 45 degrees at a phenomenal rate of speed and disappeared from sight into the dark blue zenith of the sky. The duration that we observed it was hardly more than a minute.

NUFORC Note:

Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD

Posted 2006-12-07