NUFORC Sighting 12667

Occurred: 1965-06-01 13:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2000-04-19 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Long Beach, CA, USA

Shape: Cylinder

At about 4 years of age, I observed a cylinderically shaped object fly over at about 2oclock due west.

When I was about four years old I saw something which left a real impact on me. I have never been able to completely discount this event as explained. I was playing with a freind in his backyard and looked up - due west and at about 2oclock or 45 degrees - and saw what looked like a cylinder, or as I thought at the time, a missile or a plane with no wings. Moving left to right, it crossed my field of view in less than ten and perhpaps about five seconds. I must have recently seen something about missiles because I remember thinking that's what I was seeing...but also that it seemed very strange none-the-less. It seemed at first to be as high as a commercial airliner, but then it appeared to be much smaller and lower that a jet would fly. It was silver and without any other appreciable detail that I can recall. My clearest memory of the event would put the objects length at about 30 feet and with a diameter of about 7 feet...less than 25% of its length. It's distance would then be about two or three city blocks. I sometimes thought about this as a child. When I was old enough to realize that missiles do not normally fly over peoples houses, I eventually assumed that I had seen a plane banking so that his wings were parallel to my line of sight. But upon further reflection, I also remembered being quite sure that the object was a simple cylinder having no vertical structures. I never even made the connection to cigar shaped UFOs until recently...it had just never clicked for some reason. What strikes me now is the lasting impact that the event had on me. I don't mean anything mystical here, simply that even at the age of four I seemed quite sure that this thing was very strange. It was one of those rare events which imprinted clearly as one of my earliest sustained memories in life - like the first time I saw Santa Clause or when I got my first tricycle. It is this conviction in memory which motivated me to report this story.

Posted 2000-04-26