NUFORC Sighting 137393

Occurred: 2017-11-23 03:50 Local
Reported: 2017-11-23 21:04 Pacific
Duration: Split second
No of observers: 1

Location: Alameda, CA, USA

Shape: Light

Uncharacteristically bright light moving incredibly fast, in a straight, horizontal line, from S-Sw to N-NE

I live in Alameda, California. I saw something in the middle of the night last night that I feel compelled to report to you.

I have been unable to sleep at night this past month, and have become used to lying awake in bed while it is dark, and then falling asleep as day breaks. I have attributed this to stress, as my stress levels this past few months have been off the charts.

I have recently started sleeping with the windows open, since the cooling breeze off San Francisco Bay comes through my bedroom window. As I live on the third floor of the building, it is uncomfortably warm most of the day, so I welcome the cool breeze.

There is another building approximately 20 feet away out this same window that is about 4 feet taller than this one, I am thus afforded a bare horizontal “strip” of sky, starting above the building next door, ending with the top boundary of the window, covering a span of approx 10 degrees of sky, as the primary view out my bedroom window.

Most nights I simply lie there and stare at that strip of sky, which, frankly, is quite dull. At most, I catch a plane or two slowly circling in its low-altitube path toward the Oakland International Airport, which is about five minutes from my apartment building. There is the occasional star that will break through the haze, or be plainly visible on clear nights, but I have never seen anything unusual, until last night/this morning.

During the wee hours (approx 3:50am) this morning (11-23-17), I was lying there, staring out the window, unable to sleep again. It was fairly overcast last night, with a faint star sometimes shining through the overcast haze as it would thin at times, and then becoming invisible again. This is usually what I see, other than the occasional plane on its low-altitude path to OAK airport.

At approx 3:50am, my jaw dropped open as I saw a single bright white light ZOOM past, completely in my view. It went by in literally a split second, but I clearly saw it. My window faces a few degrees NW of true West, so this object would have been travelling a few degrees NE of true North. Its path was completely horizontal, ie: it went in a line parallel with the top of the next building. There was NO sound. It was completely silent.

It was obviously low enough to be below the overcast haze. It was uncharacteriscally bright. It also travelled faster than anything I have seen before. It literally ZIPPED past my window, flying horizontally, in the span of a second . It was there, coming into my view from the left, travelling to the right, and was gone.

This is only the second sighting of something I had no explanation for in my life. It was flying faster than any aircraft I have ever seen, including fighter jets. Much faster. And there was no sound as it went past, ruling out a fighter jet. And it was a single, bright white dot of light. No red, no blue, no green, no blinking. Just a steady white light travelling horizontally, faster than anything I’ve ever seen before.

As far as altitude or distance, my only frame of reference is that it was below the layer of haze, but above the roof of the building next door, obviously. And it was brilliantly bright white. My overall impression was that it was flying fairly “low”, compared to how high the planes coming into OAK usually fly.

I have not seen any other reports from early this morning, so I have no idea if anyone else saw it and said anything about it. It was gone before I could even begin to clamber out of bed to see if I could see it off to the right.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. As I said, this is only the second time in my life that I have seen something in the sky that could not be explained away by conventional explanations.

The only other time I’ve seen something inexplicable was entirely different. It happened in 1999, when I lived in Austin, Texas. I lived in the country at the time, and was taking a walk down our long dirt driveway to make sure our front gate was closed. It had to have been between 10pm and midnight, but I do not remember the exact month and day. I want to say it was in the middle of summer. Our property was oriented squarely on the East/West axis, so our driveway was a 400 foot straight dirt road along our North border, running exactly East-West, with the gate at the road being on the Eastern boundary.

It was an overcast night, so the cloud ceiling was obvious, as the city lights a few miles away bounced off the haze and created bit of a pinkish glow to the clouds. Glancing up slightly so my eyes took in the Eastern horizon I saw a large, unmistakeably rigid “V” shaped bank of oddly cohesive clouds moving directly from North to South, about 15 degrees above the horizon.

It was like watching a “fuzzy pink V of clouds” move silently in a straight line. It was not moving fast, but steadily and silently. It disappeared behind a bank of trees on our property and i was not able to follow it any further.

No sound, no lights emanating from it, but rather a true “V” that seemed to be made of clouds, moving silently and steadily, and what seemed purposefully, from North to South, at a consistent rate of speed.

This was not “clouds being blown aimlessly by the breeze”…there were no other “low” clouds below the ceiling of the overcast sky. There were absolutely no “lower” clouds present at all, besides this “V”. This thing moved steadily, as if propelled at a consistent rate of speed. I remember thinking, “Cloaked craft made to look like clouds?” at the time.

I was heavily into UFO research during that period of my life, and had, of course, read/seen the reports of “V-shaped craft”, but this thing was not your typical “big black V”…it had no lights, and it had to have been huge…covering at least several city blocks in the span between the “tips” of the ends of the “V” shape. It was not a solid triangle, but instead a “V” or “boomerang” of pinkish fuzzy clouds moving below the obvious cloud ceiling above. I never saw it nor anything like it again.

Sorry to have squeezed two sightings into one report, but actually remembered the Austin sighting after detailing the one.

Thank you again. I check your site regularly for new reports. Yours is the most measured and least “hyped and sensationalized” of all the “ufo reporting” sites out there, and I commend you on your method of reporting.

Posted 2017-12-04