NUFORC Sighting 87662

Occurred: 2007-04-25 13:00 Local
Reported: 2012-03-14 01:46 Pacific
Duration: 2.5 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Albuquerque, NM, USA

Shape: Rectangle

White rectangle seen falling and then speeding off apparently under power of two "cones" of orange lights that suddenly came out

I am a technical writer with a degree in geology. On 4/25/07, I was at a meeting being held near the local airport and Kirtland AFB. I went outside during a lunch break and was just standing on the sidewalk, relaxing with a cigarette (sorry!), looking around. Several people were walking to their cars, etc. However, I was apparently the only person who looked up and saw what appeared to be a very stiff piece of white paper or cardboard in the air, seemingly close by and floating down toward the ground in a back and forth motion. (I feel like wincing since it seems so trite, but it was making that classic "falling leaf" motion that so many people report.) It did not bend as a I expect a piece of paper would, but remained stiff the entire way down. It had about the same relative dimensions of 8.5 X 11 paper, which is what I first assumed it was, and was coming down with the longest side on the vertical axis. The shorter, top side was tilted toward me at about 20 degrees, which became progressively more acute until the "flat" side was almost horizontal to the ground. However, I could continue to see almost the entire rectanglular shape. I thought this was odd as I shouldn't have been able to see that much of the rectangle if the object were as small and as close to me as I thought it was (I wasn't directly under the object so, if it was a piece of paper at that angle and assumed distance, I should have seen no more than a sliver of the rectangle from the new angle). I did not have any sense of there being any substantial "depth" to the object.

Also, believing this was an 8.5 X 11 piece of stiff paper, I thought to myself that it would surely hit me in the face very shortly. However, as time went on, this "piece of paper" did not appear to get any closer to me as it was falling, which also convinced me that it was much larger and much higher than I originally estimated. This made me more curious so I continued to watch it.

After at least 2 minutes of slowly falling back and forth, and slowly tilting from vertical to horizontal, the object seemed to catch an updraft and went spiraling back up very quickly. It started with wide circles that got progressively tighter and tighter until it suddenly stopped moving after about 10 seconds. At its greatest height, it once again started falling toward the ground in the "falling leaf" motion, only was now oriented horizontally to the ground. This time it fell for only about 15 seconds before it again spiraled upward for about 5 seconds.

I was then astounded to see two garish, neon-like orange "cones" of light/flame suddenly spew out of the northernmost face of the rectangle and the entire object quickly and silently left the area very steadily and heading southeast in a straight line. It no longer looked like a piece of paper, but looked like a rectangular vehicle that was being confidently driven. It's trajectory should have taken the object directly over the airport, if not also the air force base. It was out of sight in less than 5 seconds and never deviated from it's beeline course.

When I returned to the meeting, I did tell my coworkers what I had seen. I had never seen a UFO and had never heard of a rectangular one. I thought at first it may have been a giant piece of cardboard that had presented some "flip" side to me that had orange cone shapes painted onto it, creating an optical illusion. However, the white rectangle did not change its height/width ratio as one would expect if one side were completely white and the flip side was only 2/3 white. (The orange flame-like cones were about 1/2 the size of the rectangle. If they were painted on there, the rectangle on the painted side should have looked more like a square). At any rate, I do not know what it was.

About two weeks later, one of my coworkers excitedly told me she had heard there had been sightings of a similar object in Alaska around the same time, but I was never able to find any such reports. I called MUFON to see if they had reports like mine, but they said they hadn't heard of any.

NOTE TO EDITOR: I have two more odd occurrences to report which I will be doing under separate cover. They are each unique and would be just a mishmash of sightings over the years if I were to combine them here. I was diagnosed as terminally ill recently and wanted to document my UFO-ish experiences before I am no longer able. This is most certainly not exaggerated, embellished, or fabricated (it's not that great or dramatic of a sighting anyway); but I freely admit it may have been nothing more than an optical illusion. Nevertheless, this experience has always puzzled me, especially since finding out that there are, indeed, rectangular UFOs. Were it not for the cones of orange light/flame popping out just before the object took off on its steady southeast course (after acting like nothing more than debris in the air for several minutes), I probably would have forgotten about it, but now I just don't know what I saw that day.

Posted 2012-03-16