A Federal Way Citizen's UFO Sightings

Oh no, not another one of those damn UFO web pages.
Yes, another one of those damn UFO pages.

This page contains my own sightings of UFOs and other phenomena which are difficult to explain away. Because there are only a few, they will all be presented at once here, and in reverse chronological order. Layout will remain simple - just the facts ma'am. Each "file" is given its own space for text and any photos. Reports are shown in reverse chronological order; newer ones first.

13 Files are available today.

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File: 13
Date: May 06, 2009
Time: 9:36pm PDT
Location: Home (xxxxx 41st Pl. S. Federal Way WA. USA)
Conditions: Mostly cloudy, temp ~47°F (~8.33°C).
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? None
UFO lights? None.
Duration: ~200ms

At 9:36pm PDT on 05-06-09, I was on the front porch having a smoke. I then saw a very rapidly moving light, colored pinkish white, having an estimated magnitude of -6 to -8 on the stellar intensity scale, an altitude of less than 1 mile (there were stratus clouds at the time; this would have obscured it totally had it been any higher), and it had the apparent diameter of Jupiter as seen by the unaided eye.

This light moved *VERY RAPIDLY* across the sky to the south-southwest (the total time it was visible is estimated to be 200ms or 1/5th of a second). When I first saw it, its azimuth appeared to be ~30°. There was no engine sound whatsoever (yes, I listened quite carefully for this), and it moved far too quickly to be a terrestial aircraft.

File: 12
Date: October 24, 2008
Time: 6:03am PDT
Location: Home (490 Forastera Circle, Sacramento CA. USA)
Conditions: Clear, temp 47°F (8.33°C).
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? None
UFO lights? None.
Duration: ~45 seconds

At 6:03am PDT 10-24-08, I was on the front porch of our home having a smoke.
In the northwest sky, I saw a light. It was yellowish-white and somewhat bright (est. magnitude -2), so I thought it was the planet Saturn. I observed it for approximately 30 seconds; it exhibited no movement or change in intensity, and it "twinkled" slightly. So I shot at it with a violet laser (power output 111.9mW and spectrographically measured wavelength of ~407.5nm). After shooting at it intermittently for ~10 seconds, the light started to diminish, until ~5 seconds later it had totally extinguished.

I discounted phosphenes pretty much at once because the light remained in a fixed position in the sky when my eyes were moved, and discounted a terrestrial aircraft for the same reason, and because no strobes were seen (I would have certainly *NOT* hosed it down with a laser if I had even the slightest suspicion that it was an aircraft!).

Conditions at the time of this sighting were clear skies, calm winds, and a temperature of 47°F (8.33°C).

File: 11
Date: September 22, 2008
Time: 9:30pm
Location: Home (490 Forastera Circle, Sacramento CA. USA)
Conditions: Clear, temp approx. 69°F.
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? None
UFO lights? None.
Duration: ~45 seconds

While out on the back patio having a smoke, I noticed - in the eastern sky - a flashing light. At first, I thought that it was just an ordinary aircraft, but I soon took note that the flashes were *NOT* consistent with any strobe light I've ever seen on an aircraft.

The light, colored predominantly white, blinked at a rate of ~1Hz (one blink per second). The light was illuminated for ~500ms and was off for another ~500ms. The flashes were evenly spaced; never erratic. It also hung stationary in the air for approximately 35 seconds, then suddenly began to slowly move off until it was obscured by nearby trees approximately ten seconds later.

While in the process of moving off, it also appeared to dim somewhat as it (apparently) receded. There was no engine noise evident - at the apparent distance it was, I would have probably heard engine noise if it had (a) conventional engine(s).

Because of its flashing and movement patterns, I can safely discount astronomical bodies like planets, stars, or meteors.

Conditions were mostly clear skies, and a temperature of approx. 69°F at the time.

File: 10
Date: January 07 2007
Time: 4:34pm
Location: Home (1090 Lake Front Dr., Sacramento CA. USA)
Conditions: Clear, temp approx. 55°F.
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? None
UFO lights? None.
Duration: ~200ms

While I was on the front porch having a smoke, I saw a large (~2 adult male thumbnails held at arm's length) dark grey, teardrop-shaped object fly overhead VERY quickly from west to east. It wasn't jet black; it was a dark grey in color and it moved *VERY* rapidly - I only saw it for perhaps 200ms (0.2second) from the time it emerged from the limb of the roof of a neighbouring structure, crossed what little sky I could see overhead, and disappeared past the roof of the structure I was on the porch of.

There was an aircraft in the area (I could hear the engines), but it was travelling in a south-to-north trajectory at the time.

Conditions were mostly clear skies, and a temperature of 55°F at the time.

File: 9
Date: November 18 2001
Time: 2:22am
Location: Home (1st and Pine, Seattle WA, directly above the Pike Place Market)
Conditions: Clear, temp approx. 2°C.
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? Low rumbling with jet-like overtones.
UFO lights? None.
Duration: 20 seconds

While watching the Leonid meteor storm from my northwest-facing window, my eye caught a slow-moving object flying in a northeast to southwest direction. At first I thought it might have been birds - until I focused more closely on it, ignoring the bright meteors streaking by in the opposite direction. It appeared to be a large, crescent-shaped object, flying with the curve of the crescent facing forward and the tips behind. As it flew a bit closer, I started to hear a very low rumbling sound with an odd, fainter "jet engine" noise overlaid upon it.

The object itself appeared to be a medium to dark grey in color, and was illuminated solely by the sodium vapor streetlights from the downtown Seattle streets below. It had a pebbly kind of texture, as if it were made up of hundreds of small circles or spheres, like BBs from a BB gun.

The rendering I made in Photoshop as you see here isn't that far off from what the object looked like, but I couldn't find a filter that would *exactly* simulate the texture.

Once the object was almost overhead, it seemed to turn slowly out to the west, and disappeared over the water as it flew farther away from its source of illumination. The noise it made also faded away as it flew off.

There were no light emitters of any kind visible, and no exhaust flames or glow visible. The engine noise was a very low rumbling, such as what one might hear in an earthquake; accompanied by a much fainter "jet turbine" sound, like a standard passenger jet sitting on the tarmac with the engines set to idle. Or like a very nasty vacuum cleaner motor; though much, much fainter.

File: 8
Date: November 18 2001
Time: 2:30am
Location: Home (1st and Pine, Seattle WA, directly above the Pike Place Market)
Conditions: Clear, temp approx. 2°C.
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? None
UFO lights? None.
Duration: 90 seconds

About ten minutes after seeing the flying crescent, I saw two more unusual objects, and interacted with one of them. The first one was a small yellow-amber circle or disk, about the size of a small dress shirt button held at arm's length. It flew slowly in an east to west direction. Since it had no apparent lights of its own and seemed to be illuminated only by the sodium vapor streetlights of the city below, I ruled out a regular aircraft, and shot at it with a 11.6 milliwatt green laser. I just wanted to see if it was a plastic bag or a balloon caught up in the breeze. Although I could see the beam of the laser in the night sky, I did not see any of the green light reflect off the object back to me, and it continued to fly west until I could no longer see it.

About a minute later, another, smaller amber colored circle showed up. This one was about half the size of the first, and flew with the same speed, direction, and flight path as the first. It also had no apparent lights of its own. So I shot at it too, and this time I saw my green laser beam reflected back at me. After hitting it several times, it suddenly slowed way down and made an abrupt turn toward the north, and started moving off again. I quickly got rid of the laser by kicking it under the bed, and kept watching the object. About ten seconds after it made its northward turn, it came to a full stop and just hung there like a star. I watched it closely for any movement, and there was none. About 15-20 seconds after it stopped, it simply winked out, as if someone kicked a lamp plug out of the wall.

Both objects had a smooth, steady flight motion without any signs of wobbling, rocking, oscillating, or rotating; and neither one had any visible moving external parts like rotors or wings.

These objects and the flying crescent were reported to the National UFO Reporting Network after the meteor storm started to die off around 5:00am. No other objects (besides meteors, the ISS, and a satellite) were seen during the 90+ minutes I watched the skies *after* these sightings.

File: 7
Date: March 09 2000
Time: approx. 3:00am
Location: Home (1st and Pine, Seattle WA, directly above the Pike Place Market)
Conditions: unknown
Camera & Film: None
UFO sound? None evident
UFO lights? Red
Duration: Unknown - this isn't "exactly" a true UFO report

This isn't exactly a traditional UFO report, rather that of two very bizarre dreams I had, and some startling coincidences to recent actual reports I came across later.

Sometime overnight, I had not one, but two UFO dreams. Both featured the same object, which was an indistinct, dark grey or black form, with a brilliant red globe or dome-shaped light in the center. The light, appearing as an inverted (upside-down) dome on the underside of a much larger, but indistinct dark object or spacecraft, appeared to be about 1 meter in diameter, and was brilliant red with lighter radial lines or spokes emenating from the center. In both dreams, I recall the fact the light paralyzed me at least to some degree, though not totally. In one, I observed the object and its light flying very slowly, directly above me, and continuing on until trees obstructed my view.
In the second, it was buildings of some kind that eventually obstructed my view of (apparently) the exact same object.
There may have been a sound, but I can no longer recall if there was or not. No visible "beams" or "rays" were present. I have no recollection of feeling wind or heat from the object, but do recall suffering some degree of paralysis, and possibly a mild degree of fear in both dream "sightings".

Between the two seperate and distinct dreams, I had awakened, used the toliet and had a couple of cigarettes before going back to bed.

I thought little of it, until I came across some reports this evening about bright red objects which paralyzed their witnesses. That's when I decided that this incident was definately weird enough to make note of.

Dream? Or coincidence? You be the judge.

File: 6
Date: August 15, 1999
Time: approx. 12:40pm
Location: Victor Steinbrueck Park, Seattle WA (just north of the Pike Place Market)
Conditions: PC, temperature approx 62°F., winds variable gusting to 15kts
Camera & Film: Kalimar nearly-disposable (cheap); Kodak ASA200 color print film
UFO sound? None evident
UFO lights? None evident
Duration: Unknown - not noticed until after film came back.

Triangular UFO?

This triangular-shaped, silvery-white UFO showed up while the Blue Angels were flying their airshow in Seattle.
I had gotten into my motorized wheelchair and travelled to the park (approximately 2 blocks NNW from my home) specifically to watch the Blue Angels. As they perform most of their show over Lake Washington, I paid great attention to them on the few times they flew close enough to downtown Seattle to see and hear. In this picture, they were in a chevron formation making a relatively close pass over Elliot Bay - something they will typically do 2 to 3 times in their day's work. I was determined to get at least a few good pictures of them, and this was one of them.

Look above and to the left of the jet formation, and you'll see a kind of silvery-white triangular object flying along.
The object wasn't seen originally, probably because I was tracking the Blue Angels through the viewfinder and panning the camera to follow them, hopefully ensuring I'd get at least one shot to come out. The viewfinder image is very tiny; I could barely even make out the planes in it. So it's no wonder I didn't see the other flying object the camera did.

Magnified UFO

Magnified, and magnified+contrast enhanced images from the UFO photo above.

Could this be a "shuttle" of some kind, perhaps dispatched by a much larger starship in orbit?
As my attention was drawn entirely to the jets, I didn't notice this or the one above until after my film came back.

Full frame of this shot

This is the entire photo, so you can judge the UFO's scale more fully. Original size around 1536x1024.

Where the sightings all occurred.

For reference purposes, this shows where my Seattle sightings all occurred (see inset).
The long "rowhouse" looking structure at the lower left is the north end of the Pike Place Market; the water area is Elliot Bay. In the inset, I was positioned between the brown totem pole and the green highway sign.

This photograph was taken from my bedroom window toward WNW. The window itself faces NNW.

More pictures of these are available at Viewer UFO Photos on the UFOSNMW website.

File: 5
Date: August 14, 1999
Time: approx. 12:10pm
Location: Victor Steinbrueck Park, Seattle WA (just north of the Pike Place Market)
Conditions: Cloudy, temp 59°F., winds variable from calm to gusting to 10kts
Camera & Film: None (film had run out earlier today)
UFO sound? None evident
UFO lights? None evident
Duration: Approximately 1 minute

The day I took the picture in File 6 above, I saw a very large, cigar-shaped UFO flying just south of the Seattle city center. The UFO was approximately 75 to 100 feet long and about 10 to 15 feet high - with a shape like a fat cigarette or a thin cigar. It looked like a toliet tank lid viewed edge-on. It was grey in color; a lighter shade on top and a darker shade on the bottom. No flight control apparatus was visible. No gondola or carriage, no visible propulsion, and no fins of any kind. It flew slowly into a cumulus cloud, and never reappeared; despite my having waited 45 minutes for it to emerge.
I never had a chance to photograph it because I'd run out of film quite a bit earlier. :(

No blimps or dirigibles were in the area that I was aware of; and the airspace in which it appeared was closed to civillian air traffic because of the Blue Angels' demonstration flights taking place at that moment.

File: 4
Date: August 14, 1999
Time: approx. 11:55pm
Location: Victor Steinbrueck Park, Seattle WA (just north of the Pike Place Market)
Conditions: Cloudy, temp 59°F., winds variable from calm to gusting to 10kts
Camera & Film: Kalimar nearly-disposable (el-cheapo); Kodak ASA200 color print film.
UFO sound? None evident
UFO lights? None evident
Duration: Unknown - object unnoticed until film came back

UFO caught on film

Left: Wingtip fireball. Center: Magnified 10x. Right: Magnified 20x and contrast-enhanced.

This object showed up while I was photographing a flyover by the Navy's Blue Angel FA18 Hornets in Seattle last summer. As this was their last performance of the year, I planned my day around going to Victor Steinbrueck Park so I wouldn't miss them.

The object in this photograph appears to be either attached to the trailing jet's wingtip, or flying just below it. It reminds me of those "Foo Fighters" which Japanese pilots reported en masse in WW2.

These types of planes carry smoke generators onboard to leave white trails for show; however they are on (or in) the fuselage and this object is on or near the wingtip.
If a smoke generator had ignited, the flare or fire would appear somewhere on the fuselage or at the plane's engine exhaust ports. So this bright fireball-like object at the wingtip is something I can't easily explain away.

What is this?

This photo was also found in the roll shot during the same one-hour period on this day.
Incidentally, the object in this picture is in almost the same exact location as the cigar-shaped craft was seen flying into a cumulus cloud almost exactly twenty four hours later.

magnified

The bright yellow object, magnified and magnified again.

Is it a flying saucer? Or just a child's escaped balloon?
It appears to be generating its own light, notice the bright colors. Cloud cover was 100% at this time; reflected sunlight is highly unlikely.

File: 3
Date: June 15, 1982 (Exact date is approximate)
Time: approx. 2:00pm
Location: Juneau Receiving Home (Hurlock Ave. and Old Glacier Hwy); Juneau AK
Conditions: Sunny, temperature approx 75°F., winds NE to 5kts
Camera & Film: None available
UFO sound? Humming, "power generation" type of noise
UFO lights? Orange energy beam; otherwise none
Duration: Approximately 15 minutes

Paralyzed By A Beam From a UFO

Back in 1982, I lived in the Juneau Receiving Home awaiting foster care. Around 2 in the afternoon on this day, I stepped out on the back porch to smoke a cigarette. In the back of this building was a long driveway, a freestanding garage, a dipsty-dumpster, and a large wooded area. About 100 feet into the wooded area is a 10x10 foot patch of concrete with a flimsy basketball hoop on it.

Near the scene of the crime

The white building visible in this photo is the freestanding garage of the Juneau Receiving Home; if you were facing the road as if driving on it (rather than staring at the sign), the black sphere would have been about 200 feet to the right in this picture, well into the woods.

Having lived here for many years, I knew the area and the surrounding woods quite well. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have from anywhere near this home.

As I stepped out and started for my cigarettes, I noticed a deep black globe hovering in place about 80 feet away right near the basketball area.
The globe was about 3 feet in diameter and a deep, pure black; almost as though it were a hole in space yet it appeared 3-D and very real. Almost immediately after I noticed it, the sphere began drifting slowly to my right at about 0.5MPH, and began to emit a low, pulsating humming noise. The best way to describe this sound is that it is similar to the sound effect they use on Star Trek Voyager to indicate power going to their warp core. But this sound seemed more intense, and had all kinds of funny harmonics to it.

After it had drifted about ten or fifteen feet, it stopped and emitted a vibrant orange, fan-shaped beam directed toward my right. The beam then slowly swept from my right to my left; and any objects it touched (such as pop cans, old tires, and etc.) took on a more intense orange aura or glow while the background remained a dimmer kind of color. As the beam came closer and closer to me, I became more than curious - I started getting concerned. As I started to reach back for the doorknob (still keeping an eye on the sphere), the beam hit me, paralyzing me where I stood.

The next thing I remember is being back in my room, wondering just what the hell had happened.

Although I didn't notice any untoward physical aftereffects of the encounter, a series of strange, paralyzing "dreams" I'd had from a previous encounter returned and occured at least daily for several weeks; after which they stopped occurring.

One thing I had been doing that day was trying to record some shortwave radio broadcasts on my brand new JVC RC-M70 boombox. The tape was still running after this UFO encounter had ended, so I decided to play it back and see what was there. At first, it was exactly what I expected: static-filled shortwave radio station broadcasts. Then about twenty minutes into the tape, the sound abruptly changed into an odd warbling kind of noise, modulated and remodulated with all kinds of harmonics and other warbling sounds. The "main" warble sound seemed to have an up & down modulation period of around 20 seconds.
This whole sound show went on for around fifteen minutes, after which the normal static and faint shorwave broadcasts resumed.
Sometime between 1982 and 1990 the tape became lost - boy I sure wish it hadn't.

The sphere didn't seem to act manmade. The terrain in the area would have absolutely forbidden any kind of support mechanism; not from above, not from below, and not from the sides. The sphere had a smooth, natural motion - it didn't wobble like a balloon or other artificially supported object.
I think it may have been a space probe of some kind; for it was too small to have been a fully-fledged ship.

File: 2
Date: Summer, 1980 (Exact date is unknown, possibly mid-spring)
Time: unknown but in the afternoon (pm)
Location: Juneau Receiving Home (Hurlock Ave. and Old Glacier Hwy.); Juneau AK
Conditions: WW (Wasn't Watching)
Camera & Film: None available
UFO sound? N/A
UFO lights? N/A
Duration: N/A (Experiment repeated successfully for several (2-3) weeks)

Although this isn't technically a UFO sighting, it is something which I cannot explain away.

In the spring of 1980, I had been fiddling around a lot with electronics & magnetics; specifically observing the interaction with magnetic fields and high voltages. I had constructed a circuit, composed of the DC-DC inverter scavenged out of an old xenon timing light, a 12-volt DC "wall wart", and a circular hoop of wire that used to be a UHF set-top antenna for television sets. I had been experimenting with discharging the high voltage through wire coils and such, and decided to try hooking the loop antenna up to the thing. I expected at most a magnetic oddity, but what I didn't expect was to do something which to this day I cannot explain.

Mystery loop

Round loop into which subspace vacuoles can form?

The circuit was set up, the UHF hoop was connected to the high voltage DC output, and an ordinary steel paper clip was suspended in the exact center of the hoop with a piece of thin sewing thread. When I fired the circuit up, I expected to see the oscillator transistors overheat because of the near-dead short on the output, but that didn't occur (probably due to high-frequency components in the output voltage). What did occur, was the paper clip began to develop a bluish corona, and over the next ten or fifteen seconds, IT VANISHED!
All that was left was the thread, still with the tiny hole in it where it had been tied around the paper clip. I pulled the plug, and nothing happened. No paper clip. I stuck a pencil in there and waved it around all inside the loop, but nothing appeared. Still scratching my head, I decided to reverse the polarity of the high voltage and see what happened, in case there had been some kind of magnetic oddity. Once done, I plugged it back in, and within a few seconds, the paper clip reappeared right where it had been! I can't explain it. Did my twisted magnetic field somehow create a hole or rift into some subspace domain or interfold layer? Did it get phased out of normal space? Time travel? Alternate quantum reality? Optical scattering field? Gravitational lens?

The paper clip seemed intact, and I didn't notice any obvious metallurgical changes. Its apparent temperature was still the same; ie. it wasn't bitterly cold or burning hot. And its magnetic properties didn't appear to have been affected.
One thing I failed to check though, was if the thread was still hanging as though it had weight on it. So if the clip were still there, it was very invisible.

As an interesting sidelight, a couple of weeks after this experiment, I came home from school one day and found that somebody had smashed the piss out of the whole apparatus (it had been constructed on the top of a dresser), and I was never able to reproduce my original results with newly-built circuitry, nor was I able to obtain an exact replacement for the timing light inverter I used in the original experiment.
It may have been wholly dependent on the specific harmonics generated by that specific inverter circuit, and I didn't have access to any electronic test equipment at that time; so no measurements were ever recorded.

File: 1
Date: December 22, 1968 (Exact date is approximate, but month & year are correct)
Time: approx. 2:00am
Location: West Jueau (Corner of Nowell Ave. and Cordova St.); Juneau AK
Conditions: Clear, temperature approx 0°F., winds calm
Camera & Film: None available
UFO sound? None I can recall
UFO lights? Entire object evenly illuminated, emitted bluish-white light
Duration: Unknown, likely in the 5 to 10 minute range unless an abduction occurred

This encounter occurred when I was approximately 5 years of age. The exact date can't be recalled, but it was very near Christmas and the weather conditions were clear & uncommonly cold.

Around 2 in the morning, I was awakened by a shaft of bright bluish-white light entering my bedroom window. I got out of bed and walked toward it to see what was causing it. When I stepped into the beam, I became paralyzed within a few seconds. But not before I looked out the window and saw it:

A large, bluish-white object was hanging above the bare trees in the back yard. The object was shaped somewhat like a half-moon; but the "flat" part wasn't flat at all, it was scalloped like the tops of towers on a medieval castle. It was also canted over at a bizarre angle - even at 5 years of age I somehow knew the moon wasn't supposed to look this way.
It was much brighter than the moon, and seemed to be about 2 to 3 times larger than the moon should have appeared.
1969 UFO over Juneau

This is a crude representation of what the object looked like, and is fairly close to the angle in which it was tipped.

Just after seeing this object, some strange things began happening. I began experiencing what I might now call an altered sense of awareness. My hearing seemed to become much more sensitive - faint sounds became greatly amplified. A pin dropping would sound like a piece of rebar being dashed into a concrete wall; the sound of the dog's footsteps on the floor were almost unbearably loud, and that kind of thing. This persisted for most if not all of the remainder of that night.

For at least the next six years, I had these kind of dream-like things every night - and they would always start the same: a series of colored rectangles (bright yellows, greens and blues) would quickly form in my visual field; they would appear quickly, continuing to appear and overlap one another. A minute or two later, a dark area would appear in the exact center, which would then become filled with a brilliant, green scintillating light. At this point, I would become paralyzed and unable to move and my hearing would become "amplified" again. I would also be overcome with an intense sensation of terror or dread.

Over the years, I learned a way to abort these "dreams" before they reached the paralytic phase; however occasionally one of them still slips through to this day.

These UFO experiences are all real. None of them were hoaxed, exxagerated, or made-up.
Page created January 22, 2000.
Last updated February 08, 2010.
Questions/comments? E-mail them to Craig Johnson.

UFO experiences of your own? Try visiting the following web sites:
Costume Supercenter (UFO page) at www.costumesupercenter.com/csc_inc/html/static/btarticles/ufofolklore.html
CAUS (Citizens Against UFO Secrecy) at http://www.caus.org

IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE JUST SEEN A UFO, call the 24-hour National
UFO Reporting Center Hotline at (206) 722-3000. The hotline is staffed 24 hours a day,
but reports are best submitted between 8am and midnight Pacific time.
They have an online UFO reporting form available on their site to use if your sighting is a week or more old.

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