NUFORC Sighting 61348

Occurred: 1958-09-14 19:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2008-01-31 20:45 Pacific
Duration: 45 seconds
No of observers: 5

Location: Ashland, KY, USA

Shape: Circle

Near observations of a slow moving silent object and ground effects.

A sudden high wind outside attracted my attention. Thinking it was a storm that had blown in I looked outside as tornados were known to strike the Ohio valley. The time was twilight and early fall in the year 1958. The leaves were still on the trees. I looked out the back window which afforded a view from 90 degrees up to 30 degrees to the next hill which was 600 feet away. The trees were being blown downward. Our house was located just over a hill on Ray street in Ashland, Kentucky. A sustained downdraft was something that I had never seen. Prior to this event the air had been still. It wasn't cold enough for a fire. Looking up I saw the leading edge of a near object. By near I mean that there was no way to determine just how high except that it was close to the ground. As a minimum it had to be higher than the average terrain. Three hundred feet might be a good estimate. The direction of motion was north to south. The leading edge was a wide curve, the left edge did not block the horizon. It was only lit from above since it was twilight so the details on the underside could not be seen. Being a child at the time I yelled for my mother. She saw the receding edge of the object. It simply passed over at a constant speed. The axis of motion was east by at least 500 feet. The trailing edge going out of sight It had a thickness but that was seen only for an instant as the viewing angle decreased. Wind was not blowing in my face as I did not have to squint nor was wind blowing into the window. So how could you have a noise of wind without me being in the blast? On the passage of the object all wind effects ceased. Here is what was missing, no turbine whine, no motor noise, no fuel smell, no nothing. Silent and dark except for the trees being lashed downward. However the force downward was not sufficient to break off the limbs which sets the maximum force to less than that necessary to break off mature poplar tree limbs. That was about the weakest trees there other than apple perhaps. So from ! the heig ht and transit information and a good guess that it was 300 yards across you should be able to decide on a weight of the object since it was balanced by a constant downward force. I didn't notice any change in the downward force from edge to edge. Normal force from propulsion is concentrated at the center falling off to the edges. Or it is high at the edge and still in the center riding on a bubble o higher air pressure.I feel like someone who has seen something but can only say canoe in the sky. Not enough information. An object like that was part of the air force experiments at that time and Wright Patterson AFB is nearby. However circular aircraft were not that big. It is not possible to move that much air and not have some kind of audible infrasound. That was fifty years ago. My mothers story changed with time. My brother and his friends said they saw three moving back and forth over the Ohio river moving east. I really didn't believe him at the time. He didn't mention his experience until we told the beginning of ours. My memory is accurate from that time. What has faded a little are the visual memories. Conclusions? You can't say what it was. Only that it was. You can't extrapolate the origin. Consider a bright flash in the sky that rivals the sun. What could it be? An exploding meteor, a collapsing magnetic star, an unknown massive high energy particle, a tiny black hole, something we might not understand for hundreds of years, a blood vessel pressing on nerves in the eye. It is not always an explanation that fits our experience. What did we see in 1958? An object that changed position with time. An object that was opaque and had mass. An object that balanced its mass with a uniform downward force. The downward force ended rapidly with the passage of the object and that the ending of the downward force was not abrupt. The object was close enough that the entire object was never seen in its entirity. The front edge had passed from view before the back passed from view. I wish there was more. It is only by comparison with future discoveries that might give meaning to the event.

NUFORC Note:

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

Posted 2008-02-14