Full Description & Details

Times and dates and directions are approximate - however, my memory of the event is vivid. If called upon, I could point out specific vantage points we used to view and listen to the UFO(?) I have absolutely no idea if the first part of the report (my car dying) has anything whatsoever to do with the UFO sighting - but it sure was quite a coincidence either way!

February or March 1987...it could have been as early as late 1986 but I don't think so. It was a crystal clear, calm, crisp night. On my way home from class (college), in the mid-evening, my car died on a rather rural road (Rockefeller Road) that (at the time) connected Albany to Elsmere The car just stopped running...headlights went out, the radio - everything. Assuming my alternator or battery had gone belly up, I walked the rest of the way home (about 3/4 of a mile.) As I passed The Good Samaritan (retirement) home in Elsmere, I could see faintly twinkling red lights on (I believe) the very distant western horizon. Figuring it was an inversion, I walked on, not thinking too much about it.

Some time later (perhaps an hour) a friend and I set out (in his car) to see if we could get my car jump-started. We headed out to get my vehicle at (I believe) between 10:30 and 11:30pm.

Not more than a block from my home, our attention was first drawn to what we thought were bright stars. The large white lights struck me as being crossed shaped - but could easily have been the lighted underside of large jets, assuming that the white light did not illuminate the fusalage and wingtips completely. Quickly we realized that the two white lights were lead lights in a V formation (or single object) of blinking red lights, 6 or 8 red lights in all.

We were driving and immediately pulled over and stopped the car to listen. There was sound but it can best be described as low rumble - like large planes very far away, or some VERY quiet planes closer up. The formation traveled very slowly...and it didn't seem very high in the sky. Of course, we have no real way to gauge how high it was. The sky was dark and cloudless. The formation did take up a large chunk of the sky however - on the order of a basketball held at arms length (or bigger) from outer edge to outer edge of the V.

We jumped back in the car and followed to a better vantage point on Rockefeller, keeping the lights in sight at all times. We drove very slowly in order not to outpace the lights.

We watched the formation head east toward the Renselaer side of the Hudson River. As it got further away, one red blinking light on the outer right tip of the formation broke away and headed south. We timed the sighting. From our first glimpse to the time it went out of sight; Duration 8+ minutes. Subsequent research indicates a noticable similarity to an air force refueling operation....however, I've never seen anything like this either before or since over the Albany/Delmar area - or anywhere else for that matter. The blinking red lights also resembled footage I saw years later of the Stealth Fighter---so perhaps this is what we saw.

After the sighting, we drove on to get my car ....which started up again without any problem - no jump required. Weird!

Post Script:

We called the FAA at Albany Airport on the night of the sighting (around midnight) and the line was busy for over an hour. After that, the phone just rang - nobody at the FAA picked up. We figured that they were deluged with calls. The next day, we got through to the FAA and were patched through to the local director. There were beeps on the line as we spoke - we were under the impression we were being recorded, but who knows. The man told us that others had reported the same thing and that basically the Albany Tower was only concerned with commercial traffic - other stuff didn't concern them. He recommended we call the National UFO Reporting Center which we did. That was the last we heard of the sighting. Perhaps NUFORC has records going back to the late 80's and you can find our report. This would help clear up dates and times.

The next night day there was an unusual amount of military aircraft activity in the region, and the next night featured some BIG search lights up in a couple of different parts of the sky. Again, I have no way of knowing if this activity was in reaction to the sighting - the initial cause of the sighting - or was completely unrelated. I will say that I have not seen this sort of activity, on this scale before or since.

Witness Background

College educated. A long time mass media professional - hence my wish to remain annonymous.

Other Comments

As a witness, I would probably be excluded from serious consideration because I own several books on the subject of UFOs - and have followed the whole thing (with varying degrees of interest) for many years. However, I believe that my interest and knowledge actually helped in this case, in that it gave me the wherewithal to stop the car and listen for sound, time the sighting, etc. Skeptics may well disagree!

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