Recollecting my "UFO" sightings.

My 1st sighting occurred in the early 1980s in while living in Los Angeles and visiting friends in Fullerton (Orange County), California. I went to their backyard and using my 7-15 zoom binoculars started to admire the nearby hills. The following may be my imagination as my memories are not as clear over 20 years later. I thought I saw a silver/aluminum color "craft" edge on with a dome. It seemed to be riding invisible waves, bobbing gently. I moved towards a low wooden fence so that I could rest my arms and get better, solid support because when I saw the "craft" I started to tremble slightly and my arms could not hold the binoculars steady. But after I rested my arms on the fence I couldn't find the object, whatever it may have been, if it was real.

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UFOs as stars. My 2nd sighting occurred a short while later at night back in our apartment building. The location of the sighting was in the darkened pool with a surrounding area holding recliners. I laid down on one and using the binoculars at 7X started scanning the sky slowly. I saw 3 widely-spaced stars in a vertical row and I stopped and stared at them. As I started to look away the 1st or top star suddenly shot away towards the south. I froze and saw the 2nd or middle star also shoot away in the same direction, followed a moment later by the 3rd or bottom star. Years later when Internet forums propagated I read of similar experiences to mine.

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Jump to 2004 for my 3rd sighting. On June 20, I took a walk with my wife, Linda. We left our apartment building and walked towards Central Park (New York City), a half block from our apartment building. She walked on the shady side of the street and I crossed to the sunny side of the street. As I've trained myself to do whenever I step outside, I started looking at the sky. It was cloudy with breaks where the blue sky was visible. In one of those breaks I saw a high-altitude object hauling and it had no recognizable features such as wings. I pointed it out to a person that was walking towards me and we looked at it for the short while it was visible between clouds. Just as it disappeared I became aware I had my digital camcorder with me! Linda and I walked through Central Park towards 5th Avenue but before we exited the park we decided to separate as I wanted to go to Belvedere Castle, a weather station on a rocky area overlooking the Geat Lawn. I went up and found myself on the stairs that overlook the Delacorte Theatre and Turtle Pond below and the Great Lawn in the background. I started practicing videotaping the airplanes in the distance ascending from La Guardia airport. When I saw a plane appearing above the distant buildings I started videotaping and zoomed in on the space into which the airplane would eventually fly. As I zoomed in I lost my balance on the stairs and started to fall forward but regained my balance. Later, when I played back the videotape on the TV I saw that I had recorded a stationary white dot which was definitely a UFO in the same frame as the ascending airplane.

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A week or so after the above sighting I was waiting at a bus stop. I looked up and saw a small, wispy cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky. Sitting in the center and obviously behind the cloud I saw a white object. I tried to videotape it but had a problem with my digital camcorder. For the few seconds that I looked away the UFO disappeared!

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About a month after the above I took a walk in the neighborhood but left the camcorder at home 'cause I didn't feel like toting the slightly heavy camcorder. As I turned on an intersection I looked up and saw a dark, round object hovering in the sky at a low altitude so it's shape was clear. A passerby saw me craning my neck and inquired as to what I was looking. I pointed out the object to him. After a while of comparing notes, he agreed that it had to be a UFO to be just hovering there with a slight rotating movement visible. A balloon would have drifted away long time ago and whatever it was couldn't be tethered at that height. After about 5 minutes the object seemed to be rising ever so slowly and I went home with a pain in my neck.

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At the end of the day, it's up to YOU to draw your own conclusions.

© 2007 Edward Lopez