Illinois Jan 5 2000 UFO

I live in St. Clair County, Illinois and this is the first time I've heard about this sighting. It even said that it was in the St. Louis Post Dispatch Newspaper. Well, I was only 18 y/o at the time and prolly not paying much attention to the news. But still, I think I would have heard something, living only 10 miles from the sightings.The pictures look fake.Good stories Nosy.

Sounds like a variation of a mirage to me.Some early explorers have seen islands that didn't exist because of this optical phenomenon. I can't remember his name right now, but there was one particular explorer who was so convinced of the existence of an island he supposedly saw that he tried to find it until the day he died. They talked about this on the history channel some months ago.

I'm not sure that it was he who said that. The one clue that I have that it probably wasn't him (I could be wrong) is that he describes a vivid "ufo" episode that he shared with his wife and others. In this account he described seeing what he and the others thought might be ufo's. He was very excited (couldn't help but be excited I think is what he said) but sceptical of what he was seeing. He later found out through contacts that it was military (I Think) or was human related. He says in his description that he would have loved for it to be ufo's but he knew from his experiences that the mind will play tricks on you. What it came down to is the point that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This is of course something that theists or even those who report ufo's have (not a necessary last plug but relevant IMO).This is all from memory of his book "Science as a Candle in the Dark." So take it for what it's worth. Loaned my last copy to my mother.

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.

Several years ago I saw something like this. While driving down the road near where I live, I saw what appeared to be an orange glowing "ball" moving around in the sky.To eliminate the obvious right away, it wasn't the sun. It happened around sunset and the sun was going down on the opposite side of the sky at the time. Further, it was moving too fast and actually changed direction several times.It was too big to be a star, too small to be the moon, didn't look like any kind of aircraft that I'm familiar with and, in any case, was moving far too oddly to be any of the above. In fact, I might have thought it was a meteor except for the way it moved and the fact that it didn't appear to "streak" across the sky, if you get my meaning, but just appear as a spherical object.To be clear, I don't believe it was an alien craft. But, even now, I truly have no idea what it was. Whatever it was, it seemed completely real. I don't believe it was a trick of the light or a reflection on the windshield or anything like that. It seemed to have a genuine physical "substance" to it. It appeared to be an absolutely true-to-life physical object of some kind up there in the sky.All I know is that I had never seen anything like it. In fact, I was so mesmerized by it, and so busy trying to keep my eyes on it as it flew up and out of sight, that I almost steered the car off the road.Anyway, that's the story of my "close encounter," if anyone is interested. Beats the hell out of me what it was, but it sure was cool. Anyone have any idea what I saw that day? Because, to this day, I have no idea what it could have been.

I disagree Phatboy. You will always be able to distinquish "American aliens". They are the ones that appear completely naked, but have no external, or at least visible, genitalia. We wouldn't want to run afoul of pornography and smut laws now, would we?Ask yourself when that last time was you saw a lawn statue of David in the United States without the fig leaf? No matter how hard American UFOers try, they can get pretty good renditions of UFO spacecraft, but they'll never get an "anatomically correct" alien for fear of being arrested.(:raig

Tony, the single best candidate, given your description of the event, that I can think of, is that you were actually seeing a reflection in the wind-shield or similar, accompanied by a temporary depth perception problem. [as in, error of focus rather than physical disability]. That is a surprisingly good candidate for objects that are primarliy lights, and move fast or jerkily - becuase the movement of a reflection across glass can be very quick if you interpret it as an object beyond the glass.

I live about 10 west of Highland Illinois (in Collinsville, IL), and this is the 1st time I have heard anything about it (though Highland and Collinsville is in Madison County). The only thing that I can add is my best friend saw an object (UFO) about ten years ago, while driving home at night from Belleville (St. Claire County) on interstate 255 (going north towards Madison County), what he described to me was triagular with three lights on it like in the 1st picture! He's a skeptic, or was until then. I still am skeptical, but when a similar object is reported by others it makes me think.Although, there is a central command USAF base less than 10 miles from the sightings, so if anything I bet it was something crazy with the air force.Thanks for the info and the link.This message has been edited by Vercingetorix, 02-23-2005 13:50 AM