NUFORC Sighting 89838

Occurred: 1988-05-24 14:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2012-06-21 10:55 Pacific
Duration: 1.5 seconds

Location: Ada, MN, USA

Shape: Cigar
Characteristics: Aircraft nearby

Cigar shaped craft over farmland

One morning in May, 1988, I rode with my brother out to a hangar he was renting from an area farmer a few miles SW of Ada, Minnesota. He had a one passenger ultralight airplane stored out there. He wanted to show me how he would ride up into the low hanging stratus clouds and take cloud pictures. Even though it was hard to keep craning my neck all that time, I kept my eyes on him most of the time as he slowly climbed to altitude, maybe 3000 ft. Very hard to estimate. Suddenly, with no warning, a small cigar-shaped craft emerged from a cloud just above and behind him, and going at the same slow velocity but in a slightly different direction, about 10 degrees rightward.

I do have vision better than 20/20. I saw this craft for only about 1.5 seconds, before it went back into another cloud, but I was able to see a lot in that short time. This craft was not much longer than the ultralight, yet had 3 or 4 portholes along the side of it that I saw, and even at that distance I seem to remember seeing somebody or something looking down at me on the ground. (It was at about 65 degrees angular altitude at the time.) The color of the craft was unremarkable, probably grayish in color. I thought the craft appeared to be a bit too small for humans to be able to use it comfortably. Also I detected no noise from it, could only hear my brother's ultralight motor.

I was hoping my brother might have seen it so when he landed the ultralight, I asked him obliquely, had he seen anything strange when he was up there. He said he hadn't, and so I didn't pursue it. That craft couldn't have been more than 40 or 50 feet above and behind him, yet he was not aware of it. If he had, he would probably have been scared out of his wits. Since then I've had the notion that we humans are under surveillance all the time without even knowing it.

NUFORC Note:

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

Posted 2012-07-04