NUFORC Sighting 147865

Occurred: 2007-10-10 20:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2019-07-28 09:11 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Kirkland, WA, USA

Shape: Other
Characteristics: Lights on object

Silent object hovered for about two minutes then moved off at 35+ mph in a northerly direction

In the Fall of 2007 there was a huge windstorm in western Washington State. At the time, I was living on Rose Hill, essentially a ridge that divides the towns of Redmond and Kirkland. We lived in a heavily wooded area, with a long gravel driveway running uphill to 132nd Avenue N.E.

At one point, I thought it would be interesting to go out into this storm. The wind was blowing crazily, howling, with leaves and all sorts of minor debris flying through the air. I didn't feel that it was particularly dangerous, though the winds were probably somewhere around 40mph. And it was pretty cool! So I went back in and fetched my wife because I wanted her to experience how wild this was becoming.

We stood about halfway up our gravel drive, which was about 100 feet long. As we stood there, we noticed what looked like sparking in a cedar tree across the street, in a neighbor's yard. We assumed it was a downed power line that was thrashing around, tangled in the limbs of the tree. There was a transformer on a pole about 20 feet away from the sparking so there was cause for concern. My wife left to call 911 and report it. We even laughed a little because authorities were doubtless overwhelmed with calls like that and so we didn't expect much of a rapid response.

Within less than a minute of my wife going back into the house, the sparking in the tree got bigger and wilder. Then there was a huge electrical sound, like standing close to a big substation. Just this powerful electrical hum that you felt in your gut. The sparking became a ball of white light about the size of a beach ball. It just grew in a few seconds from sparkings to this vivid ball of blue white light which then sent arms of electricity waving around it, like an octopus freaking out. Then there was an escalation in the humming sound until it became very deep and bassy. At that point, the ball exploded. The sound was huge, like sticks of dynamite. I threw up a hand across my eyes and I swear the light was so intense I could momentarily see through my skin.

When I took my hand away, the ball was gone and the entire area had gone dark. All the power was out, and not just for blocks but for what looked like at least a mile square around. Totally dark. I expected people to come running out of their houses at hearing such a huge explosion but there was nobody. I was the only one outside, which seemed weird to me. I thought to myself: wow, I think I just saw ball lightning, which nobody I knew had ever seen except my Grandmother. I felt kind of blessed to have witnessed such a rare phenomenon. Having read some accounts of ball lightning I knew it could be unstable and blow up with devastating force. My Grandmother's stories of the two times she saw it both involved them blowing up and in one case blew off the top half of a 20 foot tall tree.

So I'm standing there in the dark driveway, kind of pleased with myself, with leaves and various debris flying around me. I looked up and to my left, about 100 feet away and about the same in the air, there was this dark shape moving. I thought at first it was a limb of a Douglas Fir since there was a grove of them close by. But a tree limb should have fallen, not continued to float in the air, moving slowly from left to right, south to north. At that point, the dark shape sort of resolved itself into this object. Or maybe I was just able to focus on it.

It was about the size of a dump truck, with a round part in front and an ever narrowing part culminating in a blunt point that descended in a smooth arc from the rounded front. It looked like a comma, in a sentence, but turned upside down. It was a dark gray, smooth, seamless thing. I was trying to make sense of it. My thought was that it was a helicopter but I could not wrap my mind around why a helicopter would be out in such heavy winds and flying so close to the trees. Nor could I understand why I couldn't see any rotors or why there wasn't any sound. I'm sure my mouth was agape. I can still remember feeling so confused about what I was seeing. Because we so close to many suburbs and even Seattle in the distance, I assumed there was some ambient light that defined this thing but when I think back on it any light would have been coming from behind it not in front so I'm not sure how I was able to see it so well. It didn't seem like it glowed because it was a flat, matte-l! ike dark gray.

Directly opposite the driveway where I was standing, the object stopped and swung around so the round part was facing me. I stood there staring, still trying to wrap my mind around what I was seeing. Just then, these oval "portholes" lit up in a circular arrangement around the front part of the object, in a line around its middle. Each porthole was a different color and they were intense jewel tones of red, blue, green and maybe yellow around the right hand side. At that point something went off in my brain and I thought, "holy &%$@, I think I'm seeing a UFO!" It hung there, silent, floating, unaffected by the wind, with these vivid colors coming out of these oval portholes. I watched it dumbfounded. It seemed machine-like, like something made, not some natural object, and it had very clear and definable outlines, now made more visible because of the lights. Aside from the lights, it didn't do anything. It just hung there in the air. Later, I thought it might have been regarding me. As a matter of fact, it probably swung around because it had become aware of me standing there in the stormy driveway. Or, maybe it was just a coincidence--how would you know? Then, after maybe about a minute and a half or so, just like that, the lights went off and the round part went back to being seamless as near as I could tell. The object swung around and began to continue in its original direction, moving round part first toward the north, floating like a balloon.

I started to chase it, running down 132nd Avenue N.E., dodging junk flying all over the place from the storm winds. The object didn't seem affected by the wind at all. It moved serenely on its way, purposefully, it seemed, smoothly and with no sound. As I ran up the street trying to keep it in view, it picked up speed until it was going maybe 35-40 mph. As a man in my 50s then, there was no way I could sustain running for blocks so I gave up and watched it until it sailed out of sight. From start to finish the whole encounter lasted maybe two minutes. Later I found out that there had been no downed power line to cause sparking in the cedar tree and the transformer that I had assumed had exploded was just fine. I swear there was an explosion that should have brought people running into the streets but nobody besides myself heard a thing.

I've since moved from the area in which I witnessed this thing. I don't talk about it much anymore. Even old friends think you're crazy if you talk about things like this, and of course I have no proof. I never believed in UFOs because it didn't seem they could be coming from this solar system and the distances between the stars are so extreme. Over the years, I've had a whole series of medical issues and I can't help wondering if this thing had something to do with that, since I was in fine health before. Maybe it's just that I got old in the years following this encounter. But doctors have never been able to find a satisfactory explanation for some of my issues.

All my life I've had strange things happen and have seen odd lights moving around in the sky. My Grandmother was the same way. But I've never had anything happen like this. This...was unforgettable, even though some times trying to remember it is so bizarre that it almost seems like some strange dream. I feel I witnessed the impossible and that definitely changes your reality.

Posted 2019-08-23

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