NUFORC Sighting 11880

Occurred: 1995-10-21 20:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2000-02-04 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 10 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Franklinton, NC, USA

Shape: Circle


I saw a four foot wide, moving, circular patch of road which was devoid of rain in a driving storm.

I'm a college English Instructor now. At the time of this incident, I was working as a receptionist for a law firm, and I was thirty years old. I grew up in North Carolina, and I am very familiar with our weather and our roads. I've always considered myself to be open-minded, but at the time that this occured, I was very skeptical of ufo sightings.

It was about 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday. My former wife and I were leaving town after visiting my grandparents. It was raining especially hard as we reached the stop sign where we would turn onto highway #1, so I was watching the road intently (I was driving) while my wife was looking at me and telling me some family business. There was "nothing coming" so I turned left onto the highway, into the closer, left lane, and began to accelerate. I was responding to my wife's comments when I noticed what looked like something dark moving at the edge of the right lane about a hundred feet ahead. I thought it might be a dog, so I took my foot off the accelerator (we had only gotten up to about thirty miles per hour, and we immediately lost a good deal of that). When the dark spot moved into the middle of the road and was thoroughly illuminated, I was shocked to see that it was not a thing but the absence of something.

Moving into my lane, was a circle about four feet wide of dark pavement, upon which the rain was not falling. I imagined an updraft or other weather anomaly was responsible, but a gust of wind rocked the car, and at the same time, the circle went slightly oval in shape--then back to circular as the wind eased off. I thought it would fall apart at any second, but it didn't, and as it grew closer, I leaned forward and peered at the edges of the circle. They were perfectly defined by the rain pummeling itself into mist outside the circle, giving the rest of the road a gray/white look. There appeared to be no transitional area-- absolutely no water was entering the circle. I remember my mouth falling open in shock as I saw this (about fifteen feet away).

Before I could react, our paths were intersecting. I experienced time dilation at that point--the normal kind, caused by adrenalin, which seems to make every- thing go in slow motion. I watched the rain stop pounding on the hood, saw the circular edge move onto the windshield, and then heard the gap in the sound of rain hitting the roof--it was if we had gone under a bridge. Instinctively, I hit the brakes and stared into the rearview mirror. I saw only the area of road behind us lit up in the red glow of the tailights and that another car was cresting a hill about a mile back. Just as instinctively, when I saw the area lit up with my brakes, I took my foot off the brake pedal out of fear of alerting IT, and sped very quickly away from there.

As I did this, I turned to my confused wife, and in a shaky, excited voice, said, "Did you SEE that?" And she responded, "See what?" I tried to convince myself it was some sort of weather anomaly and made a mental note to check into it. About a year later, I read some ufo literature and was shocked to find out how often craft of four feet or under are reported--up until that time, my chief point of scepticism was the small size of the unseen object. (i.e. Who would come across interstellar space in such a tiny craft?) This could have occured in October or November--I'm just not certain, but I could probably pin it down if I compared my calendar from that year with meteorological data for the area.

Three notes: The area the circle seemed to be coming from is a kudzu- covered swampy forest. There is a pond nearby and a line of high voltage towers.If the circle was caused by an object overhead, it appeared that this object was moving under its own power when I first saw it, but after entering the illuminated area, it appeared to be at the mercy of the wind. I think this shows intent--I think we surprised it, and it cut out power movement until we had passed under.

Posted 2000-02-16

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