Illinois Jan 5 2000 UFO

I'm interested in further discussion of the this sighting.http://ufo.whipnet.org/xdocs/st.clair/index.htmlI notice there are some very dramatic pictures shown and there is no hint in the test of when they were taken. There is no hint in the text that they are not of the sightings.I'm interested because I once stood next to someone while he was seeing a UFO with windows, flashing "landing lights" and doing amazing maneovers.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-20-2005 14:27 AM

I was in my late teens. We had people renting the upstairs of the house (late 20's).One evening the radio reported sightings of a "flying saucer" over Vancouver. It had windows all around. It was moving at high speeds and performing maneouvers. It had green, red and white flashing lights.The guy upstairs yelled down that he could see it. I ran up the stairs 3 at a time.He was looking out his windows facing west across to Vancouver and was jumping up and down, pointing and yelling "Look, look, there it is." (quotation is approximate - it has been a lot of years). I looked and saw nothing.The sky was clean black after a storm. Half clearn and half cloudy. THere was a considerable wind blowing the low clouds across the sky. There was nothing there.He reported all that the radio had said: flashing lights, windows, high speed maneouvers. He continued to hop up and down very excited. I moved close to look down his arm. Nothing there.This went on for 5 or more minutes.Finally, I realized that there was more than clouds and dark sky there. It had been appearing and disapearing with the clouds but it was so far from what he was describing I didn't even notice it.Venus, bright white in the clear air. Some appearance of "flashing" due to lighter clouds we could not see.When I got him to calm down and note that what he was seeing was not moving relative to the buildings in front of us but only relative to the clouds he stopped seeing what he had been reporting.I will not accept any eye witness reports without some thing a lot more to back them up.In the case of UFOs it isn't the absense of evidence that gets to me. It is the abundance of evidence of exactly the same type. Anecdotes, poor pictures and the equivalent of crop circles.Some years later with friends we saw a real UFO. We were in the mountains in the middle of BC. A very bright slightly orange object moved from the zenith to the horizon. Much, much brighter than Venus.It was way to slow to be a fireball. It was moving in the wrong direction to be a satillite and too fast and bright. We had no idea what it could be. It was definitly NOT a plane.A week later back in civilization we found that it was the re entry of a Russian satillite in an unusual (I presume spy) orbit.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-21-2005 10:55 AM

Believing is seeing.About 4 years ago I had another experience of this type:I was hiking in some wooods near here (UBC) around a small canyon with a group of friends. I was just behind them as we came around a corner near the end. There was a large pond in the trees. It was about 20 m by 40 m or so.But there had never been any kind of pond there before!! I was flabbergasted! I was about 5 m from the edge. I stood stunned for more than 30 seconds trying to figure out where it could have come from. It had several trees growing from it with ferns at their base. Some other shrubs in it and it reflected the trees, shrubs and a bit of sky.I turned to call the others to show them. When I turned back it was gone! There was no pond at all. I spent another minute trying to figure out what had happened.Where the pond used to be was an arm of the canyon. In it were a few trees that had ferns growing on them at the same height. They made little rings of ferns, some growing up and some growin down around a mid point. This was well up the trunk of the trees rooted down in the canyon and somewhat above my head height.The ferns looked like they were reflected around the midpoint as it if was a water level. The shrubs in the canyon were a bit like those higher up. The tree went up and down throught the line of the ferns on their trunk.As I came around the corner the ferns drew a line for me as if reflected in a pond. All the rest fell in place. As long as I looked at it it stayed. When I turned away and back the illusion was destroyed and even when I found out way I saw it I could not see the "pond" again, only the idea of the line that was it's surface.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-21-2005 13:34 AMThis message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-21-2005 13:35 AM

I think that, very technically, it was not a mirage. A mirage can be captured on film. It is a physical thing.An illusion is mind created.