The Only UFO I Ever Saw

When you have an avid interest in the world's mysteries as I have, you begin to take this fascination into your everyday life, especially regarding the UFO phenomenon. Since my interest in UFOs first arose at the tender age of around sixteen, I started to watch the skies more closely in a hope of seeing something unidentified for myself.

For the next five to ten years, whenever I took time out to crane my neck back and stare at the night sky in wonder, searching with eagle-eyes, scanning the entire breadth of sky within my range of vision, I would see many possible dots of light which behaved differently to the static stars which surrounded them. But many of these could in all honesty, have been explained away if I had a greater knowledge of the stars and the behaviour of shooting stars and other space debris.

One time whilst walking home from a night club slightly drunk with a good friend, we stopped along the disused railway track which always led us so reliably from home to the club during our inebriated states, and we watched the night sky with interest for a good half an hour. We saw what looked like shooting stars, moving around the sky in what seemed to me to be a much more organised fashion. Where one 'star' disappeared another would later appear and vice versa. It was as if these objects were using the same entry and exit points to vanish and reappear. We saw maybe as many as twenty moving 'stars' in that one session, but because of the alcoholic content in our bodies, I never allowed myself to get too carried away with that particular evening's viewing. Just thought it was worth reporting in passing though, as I have never seen anything come close to it since.

There have been other incidents over the years that followed, usually when watching one star for a prolonged period until it gets bigger than disappears altogether; possible UFO sightings, but the lack of movement would suggest another more rational explanation may have been responsible.

The one time I can really say with confidence that I actually saw an unidentified flying object was back in 1998, on a quiet beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean. My fiance and I were only in our early twenties at the time and we had been travelling the length of the west coast of the United States from Canada to Mexico. Armed with nothing but a hire car, one tent and two sleeping bags, we had stopped off somewhere between San Francisco and LA at a nice, quiet campsite in the off-season in early September.

The Sun had just set and we walked the short distance from our tiny tent to the beach, and stood admiring the serenity of the West coast with a glass of rose wine after a long drive. I remember that it was too early for the stars to be seen, despite the Moon showing herself very clearly. As we stood admiring the scene, waves gently lapping at the shoreline, silence in all directions, we noticed a light appear out of nowhere.

My first impression was that it must be a helicopter or small aircraft heading directly towards us, allowing the headlight to point in our direction but the absence of any sound put an end to that theory. We watched intently as the ball of light expanded in size and appeared to be getting closer as it moved effortlessly not too far above the horizon. Whatever this was, it wasn't a great distance from us like other 'lights' I had ever seen, and what made it even easier to observe was the fact that it was the only light in the entire sky at that point.

The object or light or whatever it was repeatedly changed size in a throbbing motion, appearing to increase to a big white ball shape before shrinking again. I realised at this point that what we watching was very unusual and I recall exclaiming something along the lines of "FINALLY! A REAL UFO!!!"

The object then began moving right, in a line, with some kind of colourful plasma being ejected out of it as it slowly travelled in silence across the night sky. I described the phenomenon in my diary that night as "a UFO shitting fire" as it left a distinct trail of plasma-like blobs of reddish-orangy-yellow stuff in the darkening sky.

We watched in awe as the blobs continued to 'plop' out of the rear of this bizarre orb of white light whose size expanded so impressively that it completely ruled out being a star or aircraft. It moved along a steady path for a good five minutes if not more before finally reaching its biggest size yet then shrinking for the last time before completely vanishing in a blink of an eye!

All that was left to remind us of what we had just witnessed were the strange fiery blobs which lay strewn across the sky, marking the trail which the object had just travelled. It wasn't until years later when I read about plasma in association with UFO sightings, and for sure there have always been plenty of UFO activity along the Western coastline of the US and Mexico.

If only we had camera phones back then, we could have captured it on film. As it was, I was completely unprepared and left my SLR camera in the car, not expecting such anomalous activity to occur. Whatever we saw that warm night in California, it remains unexplained to this day and will always stick in my memory as the only UFO I ever saw.