I had driven up from college (Oxford College of Emory, Emory Univ) to my home in Flowery Branch, GA. There was a story on the news that thousands of people on the East Coast were reporting UFO sightings, but what they were seeing was the vapor trail left by a NASA rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. The vapor trail was just hanging there in the air, and I was curious and went outside to see it. Sure enough, it was plainly visible. The topography. I was looking at it right from my front yard, across old Farmer Jone’s cow pasture. On the other side of that pasture was a small hill, another smaller pasture, then his house and a finger of Lake Lanier. The distance from my house to the finger of the lake was three, maybe four hundred yards. Not that much of a walk for a teenager looking to take some worms and a fishing rig over to the bank looking to catch a mess of panfish for supper. It’s also imprtant to note that in those days, Flowery Branch was not the outlying fringe of Atlanta suburbia that it is now, Atlanta being about sixty miles away, the outer loop of I-485 about 45 miles away. Flowery Branch then was a small redneck little town of a thousand or so, for the most part blue collar workers and small farmers and chicken farmers who went to bed notoriously early. It was a very, very quiet place at night. Sound traveled very well at night, and you could hear dogs barking from far away. So to what I saw, as I was looking at the vapor trail, something else came into view, very very low. It stopped right over the finger of the lake across from me. It was big, very big, at least the length of a large passenger jet. It was saucer shaped top and bottom, but in the middle there was looked like a row of windows that from what I could see would have gone completely around it. I say windows because that is exactly what they looked like, like windows with a small panel between each one. They “flashed” as if in the middle of the craft there was something like a lighthouse’s light sweeping around in a circle illuminating each in turn. It was that kind of effect. That was strange enough, just the sight of it, but this craft made absolutely no sound at all. It was completely silent. It just hung there in the air, no sound, not moving, the air was still, and if any of my friend’s cars had been over there with their loud mufflers I could have heard them. But not this thing. It made no sound at all. Here’s the thing…I was a good Boy Scout in my day, and very good at map reading and with a compass. Before I called my report in, I went and got my military issue lensatic compass. I took a reading on the vapor trial, visible in the moonlight, and a reading on the UFO…they were a full fifteen degrees apart. There was absolutely no way I could confuse them – there was that much distance separating them. So I called the county sherrif’s office, but he told me I was seeing the vapor trail and hung up on me. One other thing I should mention…standing there seeing I felt no fear at all. It was far enough away that I felt no threat from it. But after I made my call, I walked back outside to watch and see what it would do. My neighbor next door had an outside dog pen where he kept his German Shepherds. No one went near that dog pens – those dogs acted vicious. When I would mow the grass they would stand and bark at the fence and jump for the top of it as if they wanted to get out and rip you to shreds. Those dogs had been completely quiet while that thing hung over that finger of the lake. Then, suddenly, they started barking like crazy, going wild…I stuck my head around the corner of the house to see who or what was so stupid to get so close as to set them off. They weren’t barking at anyone – they were acting terrified, and trying to literally climb their fence in the opposite direction from the UFO. I walked back around to where I could see it, and it was starting to move slowly to my left, and again, it made no sound. It just glided off. Now this is funny…LuAnn’s brother, my cousin Robin, was at home alone. About five minutes after the UFO had left my field of vision, my phone rang. It was Robin. He said “Butch, (my unfortunate nickname, no longer used or admitted to) there’s a UFO over Uncle Wesley’s chicken barns (his great-Uncle Wesley was my grandfather, the chicken barns being about a hundred feet from his propery line), what do you think I shoud do?” I told him to do nothing. Then he said “I was thinking of getting the .22 and shooting at it. What do you think?” I told him, “Robin, that thing is a UFO. It didn’t come from here. If they have the technology to come as far as they have, then you just might piss them off and they might zap you…best to leave them alone…” So he went to hide in a closet. I take my stand with Muldur – the truth is out there. I’ve seen it. Someone is holding back the truth about something. That’s my story. That’s why I accept the existence of UFOs. LuAnn told me I should share the story with you, so now I have. NOTE: The above image is a rendering.
Special thanks to T.D. for his interesting story. Submitted to World UFO Photos.org
