On the subject of UFOs

[LSFL]

Let me first say that I am a skeptic about the extraterrestrial hypothesis. I believe a good amount of reports are just folks trying to glom onto the notoriety of the few reports that catch fire. High profile sightings that are widely disseminated by the media usually generate far more follow up reports than other sightings that recieve little publicity. But there many sightings that don't blow up, yet the people who experienced them never seek to gain from their stories nor do they retract them. This argues strongly that outside of the liars and publicity hounds that some people honestly believe that they saw something. I am not so much interested in what they saw as to why their brains interpreted it the way they did.
I know they are not all lying because I am one of the ones who saw something that I am unable to explain.
It was back in 1984. My friend, my future brother in law and myself were walking on country roads at night. It was a typical night coming home after a weekend of camping in a rockhouse (a cliff with a shallow cave at its base for all of you city slickers)it was a bright moonlit night which is why we were headed home. We were out of supplies and the fish werent biting and we decided that breakfast sounded better than maybe eating our remaining bait.
Anyway as we walked home, a shadow fell across the moon. We looked up and saw a very unconventional aircraft. It was diamond shaped elongated in the direction of travel. Think of a tall triangle with a squat triangle attached at the bases. Spear shaped I guess. There were several white lights spaced equidistantly around the perimeter and in the widest portion of the object there was a hazy irregular ring of red light. We watched it for awhile shining our flashlights at it, waving our shot guns and generally being scared adolescents trying to pretend we werent scared adolescents.

We lost sight of it behind some trees and when we saw it again in was parallel to us on the horizon and we got a side view of it. Sleek and thick in the rear and tapered to a point in the direction of travel. On the back third of the object there was a structure the strongly resembling the bridge of a battle ship or aircraft carrier.

So my question is what did I see that my brain interpreted as a Super Star Destroyer from the Star Wars universe? I had been hungry before and many times since and I have never hallucinated. Was my mind desperately trying to decipher a true enigma? Why a SSD?
Any thoughts? We all three saw it and agreed on the basic configuration. Also it was silent and moved slowly while in sight only seeming to be fast when we lost sight of it for a few seconds and it appeared much further away the its observed speed could account for.

[Hieronymus]

1. Like Stephen Hawking ...

I'm open to the thought that there are extraterrestrial beings.

[Eko]

2. Lets not forget

the U stands for unidentified. I love it when people say they saw a UFO and I ask them what it was and they tell me a alien spaceship. Too funny.

[Corvo Bianco]

3. I don't know but I am psyched about your story.

Anybody please tell your UFO stories I love this stuff. I've never had the pleasure to see a UFO, but I saw a demonic spirit, like you I was with friends, all of us reacting in time for several minutes in fear. I can't deny what we all saw together but I don't believe in the devil/hell/all those creations.

I think you saw a super star destroyer! I don't think your brain tricked you.

[BigmanPigman]

4. Hillary said that she's a believer too and if she won perhaps would've looked into it.

I think most people believe something is out there unless you're a religious fanatic or your ego as the "master race" won't allow that sort of thinking. So many people do not believe in things like ghosts, etc until it happens to or effects them personally. It's kind of like not wanting health care to cover everyone (including pre-existing conditions) until they need it too.

[John1956PA]

5. Thanks for posting. I do read the latest sightings reports on MUFON.com which does not charge.

Anyone who has seen a UFO may post a report on MUFON.com along with any related images or videos. The site allows visitors to access the latest 20 sightings reports free of charge.

[uriel1972]

6. I don't question that people encounter unexplained things...

,but what they encounter is up for question. I remain sceptical on alien visitors and ghosts, they may exist, however I find the evidence thin on the ground and other explanations far more likely.

[progressoid]

7. Are you still in touch with your friend and brother-in-law?

If you haven't discussed it lately, it would be interesting to see how your stories compare 23 years later. Each could write down everything you remember from that weekend and see how the stories match up. Do this independently so as not to influence the others.

or maybe....

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[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. Here's something to keep in mind.

Interstellar distances are VAST. Much vaster than most people understand.

To illustrate this, let me point out that our galaxy, Milky Way, which contains about 300,000,000 (300 billion) stars is on a collision course with Andromeda, which contains about 1,000,000,000 (one trillion) stars. That will happen in some four to five billion years from now. I know, brace yourself.

Here's a link to a couple of animations of that event:

or this:

A while back I asked an astronomer friend of mine, when the two galaxies collide, how many stars will actually crash into each other. His reply: "We don't know for certain at this point, but the best guess is no more than ten."

No more than ten stars out of 1.3 trillion. Stars really are a very long way apart from each other.

Which brings me back to the OP. While I'm more than willing to accept the possibility that intelligent beings travel between stars, it simply isn't very likely, given the incredible distances involved and the extreme unlikelihood of faster than light travel.

[LSFL]

9. Thank you all for your responses

All of my research points toward a psychological explanation ie: your mind interpreting natural or unusual phenomena in a way that it is familiar with.

For example, there is a spot on a highway that I pass frequently. The way that the overpass guardrail and shadows come together looks like a man with a backpack standing at the edge of the road. I know that there is noone there but I still move over everytime.

Another hypothesis is that they are our machines. Almost all sightings are of atmospheric craft. Maybe I saw an experimental lighter than air craft and my mind filled in the details.

I am not a proponent of the extraterrestrial theory because i believe that races not too far in advance of us tend to digitalize their personalities and exist in a virtual reality as immortals.

That would explain why we seem to be alone in a universe that seems to be conducive to life.

Would we even know if it already happened?