- The following is a true and accurate
account of my "close encounter" in Seattle Washington which occurred
in 1993. I believe it was in the month of November.
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- It was a Sunday night about 9:30. I often
had occasion to be driving north about that time of evening on Sundays
and I usually took the freeway. This time, however, I knew the freeway,
northbound, was jammed up due to an accident. So, I had taken an alternate
route which eventually led me to what I think was East Marginal Way, right
next to the main Boeing Aircraft plant.
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- I noticed three red lights low in the
sky ahead of me. They were moving in unison, very slowly across my field
of vision from east to west. At first I thought they must be the lights
of a low flying plane, perhaps about to land. Then I thought, no, they
must be helicopters because a plane, even if it was landing, wouldn't be
moving that slowly. The trouble was, I couldn't actually see the craft
or crafts that the lights were attached to. They were, maybe, a half mile
ahead of me, about 30 degrees to my right. Normally, I wouldn't have paid
much attention to this at all because I'd been making this Sunday night
drive past Boeing (although via the freeway) for the last twelve years.
In all that time I'd seen plenty of airplanes and helicopters flying low
in this area. But something was different this time.
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- It took me a minute to realize what it
was. It was the fact that the lights weren't blinking. I thought that was
odd. It seemed to me that every airplane or helicopter I've ever seen flying
at night had blinking lights. I squinted my eyes as I drove toward the
lights, trying to see just what I was actually looking at. Although I was
now only about two blocks away from being directly under the flight path
of these lights, I still could not make out what they were attached to.
However, from their slow, steady movement, in unison, I was pretty sure
all three of them were attached to a single object rather than being independent
of each other. By the time I was directly below their flight path, they
were about to reach the airspace over Boeing Field to my left. I was now
convinced it was a single, low-flying craft of somekind and I knew there
was something very odd here. I pulled my car off to the side of the road
and rolled down the window to get a better look.
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- I opened the car door and stepped out.
Craning my neck to see the craft as it passed slowly directly over head
(estimated altitude, less than 500 feet), I could see it was a gigantic
flying black triangle! There is no other way to describe it because that's
precisely what it was; a huge, black, flying triangle; not just "sort
of" triangular shaped, like one of those wedge-winged jets or something.
It was just one big three-sided, cookie-cutter-straight- edged, black,
geometric shape; a triangle with one large, round unblinking red light
at each of its three corners flat up against the underside of the craft.
There was a high, gray cloud cover that evening, subtly lit by the Seattle
city lights in the distance. Against this gray ceiling I could see the
object like a huge, dense black silhouette.
-
- I stood there almost not believing what
I knew I was seeing. I actually said to myself, "Ok. What, exactly,
are you seeing? You're going to want to remember every detail of this!
Just the facts, now. What, exactly, do you see?" I made a mental inventory.
"Black triangle. Red light on each corner, flat up against the underside
of the craft. They don't blink. It looks like it's about seventy-five to
a hundred feet above one of the main Boeing hangars. It's moving very slowly.
Maybe five miles per hour. It's heading west. It must be about the size
of a football field." Suddenly I realized, as I stood there in the
dark on this quiet empty street, the object didn't make a sound! Maybe
more than anything else, that's what made the whole thing so eerie. Something
that huge, that close, moving through the air at a snail's pace should
be making some kind of a sound! A hum! A rumble! Anything! But, no. It
just moved across the sky like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie
with the volume turned off. I looked up and down the street to see if anyone
else was witnessing this silent event, but the street was dark and empty
in both directions. I looked up again at the mysterious thing now blending
into the dark horizon. I watched it until I couldn't see it anymore and
then it was over.
-
-
-
-
-
- I got back into my car and closed the
door. The window was still open and I took another look. Nothing was there
but the gray night sky, softly aglow from the distant city lights. It was
as if nothing had happened. I sat there for a minute and lit a cigarette.
Then I turned the car on and took one more look, knowing it wouldn't be
there, but still wanting to remember where it had been. All the way home
I just kept asking myself, "What the hell was that?
-
- Whatever it was, it was my one and only
close encounter. I waited all my life to see a UFO and, as it turned out,
it was nothing like I always imagined it would be. I wanted to see a "flying
saucer! You know, one of those shiney, disk-shaped things that everybody
else sees. But, no. I had to see a flying black triangle! Then again, it
was probably just a weather balloon. A weather kite? Swamp gas. Yeah, that's
it. Triangular swamp gas.
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- ©1998, Gary Val Tenuta
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