NUFORC Sighting 176078

Occurred: 2012-03-14 20:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2023-06-02 11:59 Pacific
Duration: 5-10 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Boonsboro, MD, USA
Location details: us alt. 40 in Boonsboro

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object

Extremely close sighting of a stationary floating light above road in rural town

Family member and I were riding through a rural stretch of road in Boonsboro MD at night when we saw a light far ahead of us that appeared to be stopped in the road taking up both lanes, light was too bright to make out what was going on but at first we assumed it was lights from roadwork or farm equipment. As we got closer to the object it became more apparent that it was a single light source, and that the object was above the road. We stopped the car when we were nearly underneath of it, about 20ft from our car to the object. When we stopped the car, the object (which had been perfectly still) slowly drifted off to the side of the road past a church parking lot, stopping again when it was above a field next to the church, not changing altitude. We moved the car into the parking lot parking as close to the object as we could (at this point about 30ft from the object). We rolled windows down and turned car off. The object made absolutely no sound or wind. It was a highly saturated light source, bright enough to obscure the object in a thick glowing aura, but not bright enough to be uncomfortable to look at or leave spots on our vision. The other witness recalls the light being flat white, I remember the light having a very pale and subtly fluttering opalescent quality (only detail that we have ever diverged on). It was about the size of a small bungalow.

We sat like that and watched it unchanging for about 5-10 minutes both trying to come up with some explanation for what we were looking at. After some time sitting still, the object started drifting again, eventually whipping in an arc-shape over the field, and then up at a diagonal toward the clear night sky where we watched it accelerate away from the earth, light dimming as it went until it was no longer visible in the stars.

It took about 4 seconds for the object to go from completely motionless, hovering 20ft off the ground, to disappearing deep into the clear night sky. To this day it is the fasted moving object either of us have ever seen with our eyes. It made no sound at any point.

Discussing the story afterward we both agreed that we felt unnaturally calm during the encounter, and noted how strange it was that we had seen something so novel in plain view for an extended period of time yet neither of us considered taking our cellphones out to take a picture or video. We spent the duration of the sighting trying and failing to name the object we were seeing, both of us having the sense that we were looking at something that should have been familiar to us but we just couldn’t remember the word for, listing and ruling out every kind of aircraft we could think of, feeling the entire time as if it were on the tip of our tongues and kicking ourselves for failing to come up with a satisfying answer. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes after the experience that we slowly started to fully come to grasp that we had just seen something completely unknown to us.

I want to stress that this was not some brief sighting of a bright light high up in the sky behaving strangely. This was an extended period of time spent watching a glowing ball of light the size of a small house hovering a literal stones-throw away from our car. What we saw was very clear, and we had a good long while to discuss what we were looking at as it was right in front of us. We both get goosebumps to this day when we think about how fast it moved, bolting into the sky, into the stars out of sight.

I also want to stress the fact that the other witness up to this point firmly rejected the UFO/UAP phenomenon, and this experience shook up their worldview fairly uncomfortably. We were both sober and alert. This encounter has bugged us to this day, but we have never reported for fear that we would not be taken seriously, especially considering the extraordinary nature of our sighting in regards to proximity and duration.

Posted 2023-07-10