My wife debunked my UFO sighting...

[Correa Neto]

Last Sunday we were walking by the beach with our toddler. From Icaraí beach, across Guanabara Bay one can see some landmarks from Rio de Janeiro, such as the Sugar Loaf and the Corcovado. It was a sunny day with partial cloud cover.

I looked towards NNW and saw a witish to light gray object that seemed to be cyllindrical in shape. The background provided several points of refference, so I could estimate it was around 150m-high. It seemed to be between 20m to 15m long, and was climbing at a relatively slow pace (when compared with airplanes that take off from the nearby Santos Dumont airport), being tilted some 10 degress with the horizontal. I first tought it was a blimp, but it was too small and seemed to have straight blunt terminations at its forward and rear ends. It lacked the aerodynamical teardrop or fish-like shape of blimps. No gondola at its belly, no sign of fins at the rear.

I pointed it to my wife and asked "what's that weird thing?". It took some seconds for her to locate it. I concentrated myself on the object, and noticed some sort of details on it, that looked like dark panneling or some sort of openings.

To my surprise, it made what seemed to be a sharp turn to the left! And I could see it had no wings! And it had a roughly circular section!:eek: And the blimp that flies over Rio is very diferent from what I was seeing, and I never saw it making such a maneauver.

I tought "Oh my FSM! that things is over Rio and many people for surely must be seeing that! And that thing can not be called an UFO". I was about to labell that my first sighting of a UFO that could not be explained by natural phenomena! And probably with many other witnesses, some of whom should be quite closer from the UFO than I was.

My wife then said:
"Publicity banner being tugged by airplane. Look ahead of it, there's the plane."
Wind blowing laterally the banner coupled with my perspective made the banner look like a it had a narrow circular section...

To my embarassment, the plane made a few more turns and flew over the beach we were... That's what you get when you teach your wife some lessons on skepticism, critical thinking and what UFO sightings are actually about.:D

[UrsulaV]

Hey, don't feel bad! My mother and I once saw a UFO as we were driving up the Oregon coast--huge--and I mean really huge, twice the size of the moon in the sky--roughly circular, glowing like anything, apparently hanging low in the night sky ahead of us.

"What is that?" we kept saying. "Do you think it's...no." Neither of us wanted to take the plunge to "Holy crap, the alien mothership," but we were both thinking it. We drove for a good ten or fifteen minutes, and the object remained stubbornly present and glowing madly. The road there makes so many curves that it was impossible to tell if it was stationary or moving through the trees.

And then I smacked my forehead and said "It's the G!"

The town of Garibaldi on the coast is very very small, and in their infinite wisdom, decided to put a huge letter "G" on the hillside above town, kinda like the Hollywood sign, except that they could only afford the one letter. Approaching from the south, at night, when the letter was illuminated, you got a kind of oblique three-quarter view, and with the dark hillside invisible against the dark sky, it appeared to be an enormous glowing elliptical object hanging in the sky.

But unless you actually knew exactly what it was, there would be virtually no way to guess, and had I not seen the G before by daylight, we could have driven through the town and gone off believing we'd seen a really bigass UFO.

[Forty-Two]

On a recent clear day my husband and I were out walking when we saw a mylar balloon that had broken free. When it was close to the ground, it was easy to tell what it was. As it floated higher, though, it was easy to see how someone would have mistaken it for a UFO, due to its silver color and disc shape. Against a clear blue sky with no other objects as a frame of reference from which to judge size, someone with UFOs on their mind could have easily perceived it as being much bigger, and thus travelling extremely quickly.

It's a pretty mundane story, but it was the first time I had seen something that could even be perceived as a UFO by someone.

[Steve]

I hate to hear of marital discord. I hope this is something that you and she can work through together. :D

[Gr8wight]

On a recent clear day my husband and I were out walking when we saw a mylar balloon that had broken free. When it was close to the ground, it was easy to tell what it was. As it floated higher, though, it was easy to see how someone would have mistaken it for a UFO, due to its silver color and disc shape. Against a clear blue sky with no other objects as a frame of reference from which to judge size, someone with UFOs on their mind could have easily perceived it as being much bigger, and thus travelling extremely quickly.

It's a pretty mundane story, but it was the first time I had seen something that could even be perceived as a UFO by someone.

Mylar balloon. That was Prophet Yahweh's schtick, wasn't it?

[Correa Neto]

I hate to hear of marital discord. I hope this is something that you and she can work through together. :D

Yep, at the expense of my ego:D ...

You know, I always pictured myself as the brave bold cold family's skeptic... It seems my training is managing to at last turn a lousy Catholic in to a cold blooded skeptic. After just 12 years of training.:D

[J. Arthur Hastur]

Things aren't always as they seem.

[Apex Rogers]

Several years ago I was driving towards the small airport in my hometown, more or less aligned with the main landing runway. I saw this bright "t" shaped light in the sky that confused me. Being that I was driving toward the airport, I never thought that there was anything supernatural or alien about the light cross, but I couldn't immediately come up with an explanation. The tricky thing is that it appeared to stay in place, roughly 15 degrees above the horizon. I think what was happening is that a plane was coming in for a landing and, being that it was late in the day and the sun was behind me, I was seeing a large reflection of the sun off the plane's windshield. Surprised the heck out of me when I saw it though, and still haven't seen anything like it to this day.

[SPQR]

Approaching from the south, at night, when the letter was illuminated, you got a kind of oblique three-quarter view, and with the dark hillside invisible against the dark sky, it appeared to be an enormous glowing elliptical object hanging in the sky..

I've witnessed a similar effect involving a radio station building and its towers built on one of the many mountain sides surrounding my home town of Las Vegas.

When it is pitch black out, it eerily resembles the big-momma ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. ;)