The Effects of Sightings and Close Encounters on the Witnesses

[Thomas R Morrison]

Let’s discuss the effects that our anomalous sighting and/or close encounter experiences have had on us personally. That’s been coming up a lot lately, and it’s something that we can contribute right now which could lead to some interesting insights if we compile them neatly into one thread.

So I guess I’ll go first. As I’ve previously described, I witnessed a pair of bright objects of some kind zig-zagging through the sky in close perfect formation and with no sign of emissions or slowing as they executed sharp 30-degree course-changes at thousands of miles per hour. It was a bright cloudless day and five of my neighbors watched it with me – as we watched, some of us offered possible explanations and we ruled them out aloud one after the other : “helicopters? No….airplanes? No…rockets? No…”

The effect of this sighting on me today is the same as the effect at the time it happened – a burning curiosity to understand how it was physically possible and how to replicate it, and a general interest in understanding things for myself rather than relying upon authority figures to dictate my viewpoints.

And honestly I assume that this effect was deliberate, because I can’t think of a better explanation for that sighting: it appears to have been a purposeful aerial demonstration of an exotic flight capability, presumably to get us thinking about it. It could also have been somebody’s idea of play, I suppose, or something else entirely. But when I think about the precision and the risks involved with two aerial devices zig-zagging in fairly close formation, over and over again in the sky at a constant and extremely high rate of speed, the most reasonable conclusion that I can draw is that we were being shown what was possible so we’d try to figure it out for ourselves.

That didn’t happen with all of the witnesses, but that’s what happened with me, so if that was the intent – to inspire some percentage of eyewitnesses to accept the challenge to figure out what we’d be shown, then it worked beautifully. I know that might seem like a leap to some people, but I’ve thought about this long and hard for over 40 years, and no other explanation seems to fit nearly as well. Because a repeatedly zig-zagging trajectory through the sky in perfect tight formation doesn’t seem to have any practical value, and it also involves some level of risk.

As I see it, my sighting was a challenge: “Figure this out. and your whole species will reap the benefits – like manned interstellar spaceflight: the freedom to explore the cosmos.”

I know it sounds naïve and idealistic. And perhaps it is. But that’s my take on it – for me, my sighting was an amazing gift – a challenge to solve a fascinating fundamental physics question, with a potentially enormous payoff for humankind.

And if I can venture an observation, it seems clear to me that many of us, including Usual Suspect and mike and marduk and Burnt State and Trajanus and many others here, have similarly been moved to question prevailing views, to study all kinds of interesting subjects, and to boldly speculate along the way. That might simply be the natural reaction of human beings to experiencing something very strange/uncommon, and/or it might be the intentional objective of an unfamiliar form of intelligent life. I tend to think that it was both.

What effects do you, the witnesses, think that your anomalous experiences have had on you?

.

 

[mike]

I have to start my contribution with a strong caveat:
I have no proof to suggest what i think might have been an effect, was in fact a result of my event.

Ive been interested in UFO's since i was 5 years old. I was a precocious child in that i could read before i started school. A month after i was enroled in my first year of school the headmaster walked in and told me to pack my desk up and come with him. I was then taken to the next year up. It wasn't easy being the youngest and smartest kid all in one package. Teachers used to preface questions with "can anyone other than Mike tell the class" insert question here.
My nickname was encyclopedia Jones, i was also the tallest and i say this objectively a good looking kid. The girls all loved me and i copped a royal ass kicking anytime i got caught alone by the other boys. But i digress.

I found a copy of chariots of the gods on my grandfathers bookcase and read in it a day or so. i would have been 4 and a half years old because i remember where we lived and it wasn't the house where i started school.

So ive been interested in UFO's and convinced of the reality of ET's since then.

Fast forward to my event, apart from the shock and strangeness of the event itself, something else odd seemed to happen to me.

Now this was long before the TV show Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role (Trivia his mother was in the tv show UFO).

But again i digress, anyway if you have seen the show he has these moments when all these minutiae flash before him and he starts drawing these connections and conclusions.
I remember seeing this for the first time on TV and being shocked by the depiction.

Because that's exactly what used to happen to me in the months after my event.

I would see a random person in a shopping mall, and suddenly all these small details about them would leap out at me and i would get these detailed pictures in my head about who they were and what their life was like. it even included their memory's and the smells associated with them.

I find it very hard to put into words.

This faded over time and again i cant say for certain its an effect of my event.

But to this day i have an enhanced sense of pattern recognition and situational awareness. Ive always had an eidetic memory for as long as i can remember (little in joke there)
But this was something very odd and very new.

 

[mike]

There was also a very strong sense of shame and guilt associated with the event.
Because as the alleged entity slid sideways up the bed towards my head i remember clearly pleading in my mind, take her not me, take her.................... (in reference to my wife)

To expand on that, ive faced grave danger in my life, ive faced situations where i was convinced i was going to die, and walked away surprised i didnt.

The Fear i felt that night was unprecedented, i lost my sentience i became an animal trapped in a snare. It was a pure animal terror i dont think most humans ever experience even in a life or death situation. Ive been in a car spining out of control and crashed over a barrier and down a cliff. everything went in slow motion and i was actually calm, no fear just a fascinating observance and sense that "this was it" i was going to die.

I had another one rock climbing where i slipped and fell and was hanging on with one hand over a drop, no ropes and again a sense that i was going to die.

This was an entirely new thing, i felt an animal fear the likes of which ive never experienced, stripped of reason and humanity.

Its hard to put into words, how do you describe being in a place where words were gone.

And im well aware this is consistent with SP/NT
Is It Sleep Paralysis or a Night Terror? Learn the Key Differences

All i can state as fact my most honest assertion is this.

I know what i saw, i just dont know what, what i saw was.................

But my recollection is, i was wide awake, i could hear things being moved around in the lounge, my first thought was we had a burglar in the house. But i couldt get up to check i was completely paralysed, and as i watched the doorway it went from being empty to not.
And what stood there was a typical grey except it was about 8 feet tall.

As i said in the podcast this was pre internet, so i thought greys were 3 feet tall. It was years later i learned others have also reported the tall greys as well.

The Short and Tall Grays

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

Thank you for your fascinating and candid posts mike. I'm enormously grateful that I've never had a close encounter experience like that. I've soberly contemplated what that would be like, and tried to imagine how I might try to maintain my composure in such a situation, but the fact remains that I would be scared spitless and would almost certainly freeze solid on the spot with abject, blinding terror. Suddenly finding a human stranger in my home would be an intense shock, but I could probably hold it together enough to deal with the situation one way or another - but a totally unfamiliar sentient being looking me in the eye would be far too freaky to process in any coherent manner.

One particular experience that happened not too long after my sighting, when I was seven or eight years old, was incredibly strange and memorable. I woke up from a nap completely confused about what point in my life I was in - I couldn't remember if I was still a child, or a grown man, or an old man, and I had to check my body and look at my hands to figure it out. It was as if I'd been seeing a bird's eye view of my whole life as one thing, and suddenly crashed back to a specific point on it too fast to see where I'd landed.

 

[Randall]

This isn't a simple or easy question to answer, but in a nutshell, I'd have to say that the most significant effect is on a person's worldview. It's like going from 2D to 3D in terms of how one sees the world, and after it happens, people don't get to go back the world the way it was before. Mind you, my strange experiences started as a small child, so to me the world has always been a bit like living in Oz. I can barely imagine getting into the head space of so-called "normal people" who have never heard of or just don't believe that there's this whole other layer of reality. Maybe that's why they insist on equating it with religious belief. It's the only way they can rationalize it. They can't accept it's real.

 

[--Fin--]

I've had a very similar response to you, Thomas. I had a series of 3 sightings of orbs and black triangles in late 2007 through to September 2008. The first two sightings were somewhat ambiguous;- the distances involved made it easier to shrug off. The final encounter was utterly unambiguous, worryingly close, and truly bizarre. The overall feeling I was left with, and something I've pondered and explored for nearly a decade now, was that this was quite simply a "demonstration" of technology. The various features of the final sighting don't leave many options other than that these craft were showing off what they were capable of.

Briefly.. The first sighting, in late 2007: I saw two "orbs" dropping from the sky and doing a smooth corkskrew motion around each other as they dropped down to just above a housing estate about 2-300m ahead of me as I drove up to park at my sisters house. It's early evening so it's dark. In pulling into the car park I lost sight of the orbs as nearby rooftops blocked my view. As I got out of the car, from the same direction where I'd last seen the orbs appear 2 black, triangular craft. Equilateral triangles. No discernable details except white lights on each corner and a single white flashing light in the centre. A meter or two apart. Very close formation. No discernible noise. Heading towards the centre of my home town, Monmouth. I was on the outskirts.

I had taken a deep interest in UFO's in the months leading up to this. SO.. I shrugged it off! I omitted the orbs entirely from the equation and thought this was way "too good to be true", and so it was probably just two aircraft. The white flashing lights really helped me take this stance and run with it. I still shared the info with some UFO friends, but I was low-key about it. Always thinking "too good to be true".. "must have been aircraft".

Fast-forward now to September 26th. I've moved house, from miles out of town, to an estate just over the river from Monmouth, and I've got a new job as a taxi driver. Its about 10.00pm on a Friday night. I pick up a customer from a pub in town, and we drive up the dual carriageway towards "Goodrich", the first village in that direction. As we come over the brow of a hill I spot two black triangles, again in formation, they look exactly like before except now they also have a row of 4 distinct large turquoise blue lights along the back end and several other small lights in a symmetrical pattern, in multiple primary colors. Again the triangles are in very close formation.. staggered. One behind and to the side of the other. I exclaim something like "what the fuck is that" to my passenger. He follows my lead, peering up through the windscreen as they are now about to pass overhead, and he says he can see them too! At this point I actually start to feel anger with more than a hint of adrenaline. I'm now seeing them as clearly as before and this is feeling very creepy because its the second time. The anger was from a "what the hell is going on" feeling, as it dawned upon me that indeed these were black triangles, and I had now seen them twice. Kind of ridiculous to me at the time since I was relatively new to UFO's and had never heard of 2 black triangles in close formation, let alone this happening multiple times to the same person! I stopped the car in the slip-road that leads to a service station, got out, and watched them continue over the hill behind me. They were heading straight back along the road I'd just come down. The height was hard to estimate because it was dark, same as previously when I had seen them, but I made a rough estimate, for both sightings, to be roughly the height of Big Ben, the infamous London clocktower. He's 96m tall.

I dropped off my customer shortly afterwards. Before he got out we spoke a little more about it. He said he'd never seen aircraft like that before, and claimed to be ex-military.

I checked with my boss and headed back towards town.. On the way I stopped to pick up a customer, but after about 10 minutes wait there was no sign of them, so I checked again with my boss. He called me back into town for a regular customer 10:30 pickup which I did nearly every day of the week, from before then, until 2015 when I quit the job. I bring this up because it makes me absolutely 100% sure of the time.

So it's about 10.25pm and I'm heading back down the dual carriageway towards Monmouth for a 10:30 pickup. The black triangles had been heading this way when I lost sight of them. Importantly, by this time I was assuming, wow, lucky me.. I've seen black triangles twice. I thought that was it. I did not expect what came next:

As I approached the traffic lights I saw down the road, and over to its right, 2 lights which appeared to be hovering above the trees. Now I began to get intensely concerned. I had stopped due to the traffic lights being red. When they turned green, I slowly pulled forward and headed down the road towards the lights, winding down my electric window as I went. As I got closer it became clear what these were. Utterly bizarre though this was, I found myself driving past them, seeing them from multiple vantage points. They were two amber balls of light, one above the other. I initially estimated their size to be that of a basketball, but I now think a bit larger. (I've since revisited the spot several times and can identify the exact trees they were hovering above). They were sitting completely still a matter of a few meters above the treetops by the side of the road opposite me, about 20m at most from my car as I drove past them. I became quite frightened. The lower one had a large spike, again made of amber light, extending out from its right side. Both balls appeared to be fizzing intensely with energy. Picture timelapse videos of the sun. That kind of fast, boiling with energy, look. I did not feel at all safe being so close to them. My mind was racing.. Could they explode? So I continued to drive down the road to put some distance between us, knowing a slip-road was approaching.

I pulled over in the slip road, got out of the car, turning around as I did, to look back at the orbs. They were no longer there. Instead, precisely in the same spot where the orbs had been, were now two very large black triangular aircraft. Side by side. Again only a few metres apart at most. Still just a few metres above the treetops to the side of the road. I was absolutely stunned and in awe. They were beautiful, thin, futuristic looking aircraft. Majestic. Silent. I had about 5 seconds to take it all in before they slowly started to move across the four lanes of the dual carriageway, AT WALKING PACE. They were 250m away from me, and each one was pretty much exactly the size of the local "Shell" petrol station roof, (which I've known my entire life), which sits immediately to the left of the dual carriageway, meters from where I'm standing watching these triangles. I am quite confident regarding my estimation of their approximate size. That petrol station has 12 pumps. You could have parked 12 cars under each of these triangles. As they began to cross over the road they did several things which come back to this "demonstration" hypothesis. (1) They distinctly began to elongate. The impression I got was that I'd caught the orbs changing, into the triangles, had to look away to park, and that then I'd witnessed the elongation of the triangles as a continuance of this morphing procedure. (More on that below) (2) As they reached about halfway across the road they both, in perfect sync, became partially transparent, for about a second, at most. It was a momentary effect, but it was incredibly obvious and strange. Why just for so short a time? Again, it totally felt like: to show off. (3) As they reached the other side of the road, they both turned their backs to me and slowly started to glide away up the road back towards Goodrich, one of them soon splitting off 90 degrees to the right and heading over the Wye Bridge. AS THEY DID THIS, all of the lights on their underside, changed from multiple colours, to white. All of them. Including the large row of 4 turquoise lights, which, by the way, were clearly bulging out from the bottom of the craft. Much larger than all the other lights which were more like tiny LED's.

So, adding up the various ingredients: there's the potential that the orbs did indeed somehow morph into the triangles, though I can't say this for sure. I can say for sure that one of the orbs was indeed changing shape as I drove past it; the spike coming out of its right side was clearly extending in length! But in driving to the slip-road and pulling the car over I had to take my eyes off the orbs for what I've estimated was about 15-20 seconds. So I cannot say with certainty that the orbs changed into the triangles, but this does seem to be the case. The rest: the elongation of the triangles, the momentary transparency, and all the lights changing colour at the same time to white. Those parts were completely unambiguous, bizarre, and all the more bizarre for having been compressed into such a short time-span. I've been hard pressed to sensibly decode such behaviour in any way other than: this was a display of what this technology is capable of. They were showing off.

How has it affected me nearly 10 years down the line? It's hard to say. I could say it's made me more spiritually mature.. more forgiving.. more ready to deal with emotional issues, family disasters, etc. I feel like it has. But that could also just be part of the way I would have matured had I NOT had this encounter. I just can't say for sure, but I could speculate all night. If the proof is in the pudding, then what it has absolutely been responsible for is years of serious discussion of the subject online and off. I've bugged friends and family with it. I've educated workmates. I've made enemies of many a believer due to my feeling of responsibility towards the ufo community to debunk manure where I see it, and often I do that without worrying about stepping on people's toes. My firm knowledge, not belief, that the phenomena is absolutely real yet is thus far so tough to prove has undoubtedly left me incredibly concerned about government, cynical about society, tired with ufology and very frustrated and upset with how little support I've had from my loved-ones regarding what was ultimately the most important period of my life. I was an introvert before but since my sighting I feel even more isolated and abnormal. This isn't something I find too depressing since now I'm 37 I've really moved beyond caring much for worrying about other people's opinions of me. But occasionally it still hits me: this has had real implications for my relationships with others. Most of them negative. Many of them immeasurable.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

I've had a very similar response to you, Thomas. I had a series of 3 sightings of orbs and black triangles in late 2007 through to September 2008. The first two sightings were somewhat ambiguous;- the distances involved made it easier to shrug off. The final encounter was utterly unambiguous, worryingly close, and truly bizarre. The overall feeling I was left with, and something I've pondered and explored for nearly a decade now, was that this was quite simply a "demonstration" of technology. The various features of the final sighting don't leave many options other than that these craft were showing off what they were capable of.

Thank you for this fascinating and detailed post --Fin--, and welcome to The Paracast forums. I'm very impressed with your illustration as well - previously I've only heard descriptions of the highly sophisticated, sleek design of the black triangles, so it's very satisfying to see a lifelike representation of them.

But your observation of those two seething "plasma balls" preceding their appearance in your last account is unlike anything I've heard about before, and frankly I'm envious that you got to witness such a mysterious phenomenon. What are we to make of this? Were those fiery orbs some kind of wormhole for the craft to travel through, or did they somehow transform into the craft that you observed subsequently, or was some other process still far from human comprehension taking place above the treetops that night? I suppose that we can only marvel at the possibilities, and hope that one day the physical sciences will advance far enough to understand what you witnessed. I'm curious to know if the orbs that you saw descending from the sky in your first sighting resembled the fizzling orbs that you saw in your last sighting. The possibility that these objects can exist as either small globes of plasma or as large solid black triangles, is absolutely mind-boggling - suggesting a level of technological sophistication vastly beyond the wildest aspirations of modern physics.

The impact of these experiences on interpersonal relationships is lamentable, but I think the same effect is associated with any exceedingly anomalous experience in life. I've heard that some feudal serfs were executed for reporting meteors, because the notion of a star falling from the celestial sphere was considered heresy by the Church. So I guess some level of social alienation is a comparatively benign consequence. Still, it's sad that most humans have such a parochial view of our cosmos, given all that we've learned in recent decades.

I like to think that these kinds of extraordinary observations help to elevate our minds from the dreary and mundane concerns of the average person - it may be alienating to see a broader scope of reality, but perhaps more importantly, it's as least as liberating for the mind. And in the final analysis, I would choose to have such experiences for that reason, regardless of the costs to me personally and socially. Because a large social network can be delightful, but it can't compare with the joy of a richly vibrant mental life with its limitless inner frontiers of exploration and discovery.

 

[--Fin--]

The first time I saw the orbs in 2007 I was too far away to really get an idea of their surface, plus they were dropping down pretty swiftly. I have thought extensively about the various possibilities re: the orbs apparently changing into the triangles. I'm as baffled as anyone. Perhaps the orbs are "containers" of sorts.. Or perhaps they can change into other shapes/crafts. I do think its significant to my personal case that I had absolutely never heard of or read about (as far as I can recall) this side of the phenomena before my sighting. I had heard of black triangles, of course, and orbs. But never orbs apparently changing INTO triangles, I'd never heard of that in the many reports I had read up to that time, in the multiple books I'd read in the preceding months, and online. I have however SINCE spotted more than a handful of sightings where this behaviour is reported. Morphing crafts, morphing orbs, and triangles and other UFO types changing shape. Most bizarrely, I think, has been my discovery of the UK M.O.D "Condign" report into "UAP's", which describes how:

"Occasionally and perhaps exceptionally, it seems a field with, undetermined characteristics can exist between certain charged bouyant objects in loose formation, the intervening space between them forms an area, viewed as a shape, often Triangular, from which the reflection of light does not occur. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently black "Craft", often triangular and up to hundreds of feet in length."

Erm, really? lol. I know the Condign report had its flaws. Regardless, the statement above is bizarre, and just happens to be describing, pretty much, orbs creating black triangles. Where did they get this info? Apparently, just from UFO reports.

http://www.disclosureproject.org/docs/pdf/uap_exec_summary_dec00.pdf

http://www.ufocasebook.com/pdf/projectcondign.pdf

 

[Constance]

I've had a very similar response to you, Thomas. I had a series of 3 sightings of orbs and black triangles in late 2007 through to September 2008. The first two sightings were somewhat ambiguous;- the distances involved made it easier to shrug off. The final encounter was utterly unambiguous, worryingly close, and truly bizarre. The overall feeling I was left with, and something I've pondered and explored for nearly a decade now, was that this was quite simply a "demonstration" of technology. The various features of the final sighting don't leave many options other than that these craft were showing off what they were capable of.

Briefly.. The first sighting, in late 2007: I saw two "orbs" dropping from the sky and doing a smooth corkskrew motion around each other as they dropped down to just above a housing estate about 2-300m ahead of me as I drove up to park at my sisters house. It's early evening so it's dark. In pulling into the car park I lost sight of the orbs as nearby rooftops blocked my view. As I got out of the car, from the same direction where I'd last seen the orbs appear 2 black, triangular craft. Equilateral triangles. No discernable details except white lights on each corner and a single white flashing light in the centre. A meter or two apart. Very close formation. No discernible noise. Heading towards the centre of my home town, Monmouth. I was on the outskirts.

I had taken a deep interest in UFO's in the months leading up to this. SO.. I shrugged it off! I omitted the orbs entirely from the equation and thought this was way "too good to be true", and so it was probably just two aircraft. The white flashing lights really helped me take this stance and run with it. I still shared the info with some UFO friends, but I was low-key about it. Always thinking "too good to be true".. "must have been aircraft".

Fast-forward now to September 26th. I've moved house, from miles out of town, to an estate just over the river from Monmouth, and I've got a new job as a taxi driver. Its about 10.00pm on a Friday night. I pick up a customer from a pub in town, and we drive up the dual carriageway towards "Goodrich", the first village in that direction. As we come over the brow of a hill I spot two black triangles, again in formation, they look exactly like before except now they also have a row of 4 distinct large turquoise blue lights along the back end and several other small lights in a symmetrical pattern, in multiple primary colors. Again the triangles are in very close formation.. staggered. One behind and to the side of the other. I exclaim something like "what the fuck is that" to my passenger. He follows my lead, peering up through the windscreen as they are now about to pass overhead, and he says he can see them too! At this point I actually start to feel anger with more than a hint of adrenaline. I'm now seeing them as clearly as before and this is feeling very creepy because its the second time. The anger was from a "what the hell is going on" feeling, as it dawned upon me that indeed these were black triangles, and I had now seen them twice. Kind of ridiculous to me at the time since I was relatively new to UFO's and had never heard of 2 black triangles in close formation, let alone this happening multiple times to the same person! I stopped the car in the slip-road that leads to a service station, got out, and watched them continue over the hill behind me. They were heading straight back along the road I'd just come down. The height was hard to estimate because it was dark, same as previously when I had seen them, but I made a rough estimate, for both sightings, to be roughly the height of Big Ben, the infamous London clocktower. He's 96m tall.

I dropped off my customer shortly afterwards. Before he got out we spoke a little more about it. He said he'd never seen aircraft like that before, and claimed to be ex-military.

I checked with my boss and headed back towards town.. On the way I stopped to pick up a customer, but after about 10 minutes wait there was no sign of them, so I checked again with my boss. He called me back into town for a regular customer 10:30 pickup which I did nearly every day of the week, from before then, until 2015 when I quit the job. I bring this up because it makes me absolutely 100% sure of the time.

So it's about 10.25pm and I'm heading back down the dual carriageway towards Monmouth for a 10:30 pickup. The black triangles had been heading this way when I lost sight of them. Importantly, by this time I was assuming, wow, lucky me.. I've seen black triangles twice. I thought that was it. I did not expect what came next:

As I approached the traffic lights I saw down the road, and over to its right, 2 lights which appeared to be hovering above the trees. Now I began to get intensely concerned. I had stopped due to the traffic lights being red. When they turned green, I slowly pulled forward and headed down the road towards the lights, winding down my electric window as I went. As I got closer it became clear what these were. Utterly bizarre though this was, I found myself driving past them, seeing them from multiple vantage points. They were two amber balls of light, one above the other. I initially estimated their size to be that of a basketball, but I now think a bit larger. (I've since revisited the spot several times and can identify the exact trees they were hovering above). They were sitting completely still a matter of a few meters above the treetops by the side of the road opposite me, about 20m at most from my car as I drove past them. I became quite frightened. The lower one had a large spike, again made of amber light, extending out from its right side. Both balls appeared to be fizzing intensely with energy. Picture timelapse videos of the sun. That kind of fast, boiling with energy, look. I did not feel at all safe being so close to them. My mind was racing.. Could they explode? So I continued to drive down the road to put some distance between us, knowing a slip-road was approaching.

I pulled over in the slip road, got out of the car, turning around as I did, to look back at the orbs. They were no longer there. Instead, precisely in the same spot where the orbs had been, were now two very large black triangular aircraft. Side by side. Again only a few metres apart at most. Still just a few metres above the treetops to the side of the road. I was absolutely stunned and in awe. They were beautiful, thin, futuristic looking aircraft. Majestic. Silent. I had about 5 seconds to take it all in before they slowly started to move across the four lanes of the dual carriageway, AT WALKING PACE. They were 250m away from me, and each one was pretty much exactly the size of the local "Shell" petrol station roof, (which I've known my entire life), which sits immediately to the left of the dual carriageway, meters from where I'm standing watching these triangles. I am quite confident regarding my estimation of their approximate size. That petrol station has 12 pumps. You could have parked 12 cars under each of these triangles. As they began to cross over the road they did several things which come back to this "demonstration" hypothesis. (1) They distinctly began to elongate. The impression I got was that I'd caught the orbs changing, into the triangles, had to look away to park, and that then I'd witnessed the elongation of the triangles as a continuance of this morphing procedure. (More on that below) (2) As they reached about halfway across the road they both, in perfect sync, became partially transparent, for about a second, at most. It was a momentary effect, but it was incredibly obvious and strange. Why just for so short a time? Again, it totally felt like: to show off. (3) As they reached the other side of the road, they both turned their backs to me and slowly started to glide away up the road back towards Goodrich, one of them soon splitting off 90 degrees to the right and heading over the Wye Bridge. AS THEY DID THIS, all of the lights on their underside, changed from multiple colours, to white. All of them. Including the large row of 4 turquoise lights, which, by the way, were clearly bulging out from the bottom of the craft. Much larger than all the other lights which were more like tiny LED's.

So, adding up the various ingredients: there's the potential that the orbs did indeed somehow morph into the triangles, though I can't say this for sure. I can say for sure that one of the orbs was indeed changing shape as I drove past it; the spike coming out of its right side was clearly extending in length! But in driving to the slip-road and pulling the car over I had to take my eyes off the orbs for what I've estimated was about 15-20 seconds. So I cannot say with certainty that the orbs changed into the triangles, but this does seem to be the case. The rest: the elongation of the triangles, the momentary transparency, and all the lights changing colour at the same time to white. Those parts were completely unambiguous, bizarre, and all the more bizarre for having been compressed into such a short time-span. I've been hard pressed to sensibly decode such behaviour in any way other than: this was a display of what this technology is capable of. They were showing off.

How has it affected me nearly 10 years down the line? It's hard to say. I could say it's made me more spiritually mature.. more forgiving.. more ready to deal with emotional issues, family disasters, etc. I feel like it has. But that could also just be part of the way I would have matured had I NOT had this encounter. I just can't say for sure, but I could speculate all night. If the proof is in the pudding, then what it has absolutely been responsible for is years of serious discussion of the subject online and off. I've bugged friends and family with it. I've educated workmates. I've made enemies of many a believer due to my feeling of responsibility towards the ufo community to debunk manure where I see it, and often I do that without worrying about stepping on people's toes. My firm knowledge, not belief, that the phenomena is absolutely real yet is thus far so tough to prove has undoubtedly left me incredibly concerned about government, cynical about society, tired with ufology and very frustrated and upset with how little support I've had from my loved-ones regarding what was ultimately the most important period of my life. I was an introvert before but since my sighting I feel even more isolated and abnormal. This isn't something I find too depressing since now I'm 37 I've really moved beyond caring much for worrying about other people's opinions of me. But occasionally it still hits me: this has had real implications for my relationships with others. Most of them negative. Many of them immeasurable.

@Fin, thank you for your detailed description of your sighting (and others' sightings) in your location in the fall of 2007. My last ufo sighting, in the first week of January 2005, was similar in several respects. I live in a city in north Florida. I was driving near sunset in 'rush hour' traffic on a multilane street going north/northwest when I saw large and very brilliant white lights high in a 30-40 foot tall pine tree on a smaller street to my right. I turned into that street and parked directly across from that tree and rolled down my car window to observe these lights. They might have been 'orbs' but their light was too brilliant for me to discern their edges. Certainly they appeared to be round. They moved about up in the heights of the tree and at one point seemed to turn, revealing a grill with vertical slots through which intensely hot light flowed.

Just after that the object moved out over the street I was parked on and appeared as a white or light gray triangle whose bottom surface was covered with a field of tiny white lights. It was headed east, and I watched it as it moved extremely slowly toward an elevated thickly treed area just beyond the next cross-street. It moved so slowly that I wondered how it could remain airborne. I decided not to try to follow it since I'd lived in that hilly, thickly treed neighborhood and knew it would be hard to keep it in sight.

Twenty minutes later I was returning south on the two-lane street that the object had crossed over and discovered that a car had crashed into the stone base of a streetlight about 50 feet beyond the intersection the object had crossed over. There was no one in the car but there were two or three police cars parked around it, sealing off the street. I had to take a small street to the right to leave the site of the accident, re-connecting to the major artery I'd left when I first saw the lights in the tree.

My thought was that the accident might well have occurred because the driver of the crashed car had seen the object crossing the intersection, since that smaller road was clear-cut of trees on both sides, allowing a full view of the sky. I called the city police department the next morning to see if anyone there would give me information on the cause of the car accident, but was brushed off. No coverage followed in the city newspaper.

 

[Constance]

This isn't a simple or easy question to answer, but in a nutshell, I'd have to say that the most significant effect is on a person's worldview. It's like going from 2D to 3D in terms of how one sees the world, and after it happens, people don't get to go back the world the way it was before. Mind you, my strange experiences started as a small child, so to me the world has always been a bit like living in Oz. I can barely imagine getting into the head space of so-called "normal people" who have never heard of or just don't believe that there's this whole other layer of reality. Maybe that's why they insist on equating it with religious belief. It's the only way they can rationalize it. They can't accept it's real.

Your post called to mind again this Condign extract from @Fin's post:

Morphing crafts, morphing orbs, and triangles and other UFO types changing shape. Most bizarrely, I think, has been my discovery of the UK M.O.D "Condign" report into "UAP's", which describes how:

"Occasionally and perhaps exceptionally, it seems a field with, undetermined characteristics can exist between certain charged bouyant objects in loose formation, the intervening space between them forms an area, viewed as a shape, often Triangular, from which the reflection of light does not occur. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently black "Craft", often triangular and up to hundreds of feet in length."

I agree with @Fin that this paragraph is exceedingly 'fuzzy'. What was the author attempting to say? It does not sound like a reasonable or logical explanation for the appearance of black triangles, but it might be that the author is working from only vaguely understood hypotheses or theories expressed by physicists concerning the limitations of human vision.

In other words, the fact that what is visible to us is limited by the extent of the EM spectrum to which we have access more than strongly suggests that there might be a great deal in the being of what-is that is not visible to us. One question to be asked is whether we might still occasionally have partial access to the visibility of anomalous objects that manipulate light, along with other forms of energy, in our vicinity. Might species of advanced extraplanetary life operating anomalous objects/crafts near earth sometimes intentionally manipulate EM energies they employ in getting here into a light spectrum briefly visible to us in order to signal their presence?

In short, we likely do not see all that's 'there' in front of us all of the time. Nor is it likely that we hear more than a limited range of sound frequencies that might be generated by these anomalous and obviously powerful objects/machines. The sudden silence that occurs during sightings in wilderness areas where wildlife is present suggests that these animals and birds go silent because they are hearing what are for them anomalous sounds that we do not/cannot hear. In other cases, of course, farm animals as well as some wild animals typically become visibly terrified and flee when ufos are nearby.

What varying sensoria afforded to different species of animals evolving on earth might account for these various reactions? And on what basis can we presume that our species is in a position to comprehensively define and understand the properties and capabilities of these apparent objects?

Not that I think we should stop trying to understand these phenomena. But we need to recognize the limits of what we are actually able to sense.

 

[Randall]

... Not that I think we should stop trying to understand these phenomena. But we need to recognize the limits of what we are actually able to sense.

Very true. That's why I say it's entirely possible ( even likely ) that the aliens have active camouflage technology that screens them from our human sensory receptors. However extended range sensors that detect EM far on either side of our natural frequency detection ability have been created ( FLIR is one example ). I doubt very much that the aliens employ a range of frequencies that are beyond our detection. However our limited number of specialized detectors combined with the possibility of encryption might mean that alien signals go completely unnoticed. So it's not just being able to detect the signal, it's also knowing where to look and how to interpret it.

 

[mike]

I have one more account, that while it doesn't directly involve UFO's has in later years given me something to think about.
As a kid i was always reaching for the sky, the joke was if you are looking for Michael first find the tallest tree...
Later it was rock climbing and it was during one of these climbs i nearly killed myself. I had climbed up and over an overhang and found myself dangling 30 storeys above the valley below. I remeber thinking the pine trees way down there looked like ones on a model train set.
Anyway i wasn't using ropes, and i found myself unable to go back, and slowly slipping off this overhang. My only hope was to take a risk and throw myself forward and try and grab a small protrusion above me.
If that failed the process of trying would have seen me fall straight away. And the longer i agonized about the attempt, the further i slipped from it.
Just as i made the commitment to do it, my life flashed before my eyes.
Just like they say it does.
It was like my memories were one of these

And every moment flashed before me as if it were spun at speed.

This was pre personal computer times.

But today , In hindsight i would describe it like a HDD backup.

Its the 21st century and of course we are talking about synthetic telepathy and mind uploading.

And then i see the last Doctor who Xmas special with its plot device of ET's/Future humans uploading a persons memories at the point they die, storing and preserving their unique library of experiences.

Testimony was a practice for the glass people to create more of their kind. They took the people who were near death, duplicated their memories into their Glass avatar, and then put back to their human bodies at the moment of their death with no pain and distress, or any memory of the Testimony process. The dead then could be uploaded into the avatar, and became a Glass person.

Testimony

My usual caveat, not suggesting i have found any answers. Just an interesting idea.

Flashbacks before you die are real

Life review - Wikipedia

But it does happen, i know because Ive experienced it.