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UFO reporting center.

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Mass Harbor, Maine.

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I'd like to report a UFO.

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I had an experience here last July 22nd.

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Okay, I'd like to hear about it.

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And what exactly happened was, it was myself and a friend were flying.

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I'm a commercial pilot.

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And we had taken off here at the Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton,

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en route to Rockman, Maine.

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And we were, I wasn't flying.

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I was just sitting past your copilot's side.

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And a friend of mine was flying.

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He was a pilot man.

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And, oh, let's see.

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It was about, I'd say the actual sighting took place at around 335, 340 somewhere in there.

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That's when we got in contact with Bangor Approach.

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Yes.

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What exactly happened was that we had just taken off from the airport

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and was climbing out over a harbor that we refer to here as Blue Hill Harbor.

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And Blue Hill Bay, yeah.

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And we were up around, we were going through 4,500 feet.

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We were climbing up to 6,500 feet for our route down.

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And I had this weird feeling that something, you know, like something was watching

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or something was looking at you, you know what I mean?

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Right.

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That type of very feeling.

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And I couldn't figure out what it was until I looked out across Bill,

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the front part of Bill, out the left wing at about our nine o'clock position and high.

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And I saw this object.

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And it wasn't bright like a light.

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It was shining like polished aluminum or polished metal.

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And at first when I saw it, I thought, well, you know, I've got about 4,500 hours of flying time.

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And, you know, being a pilot, we're always conscious of other aircraft.

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And I tried every way, shape, or form for about 10, 15 seconds there before I let Bill know

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of trying to make this out as an airplane, you know, like a reflection off a tail

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of an airline up at high altitude or, you know, they hadn't got up above

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to where it would have a vapor stream.

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And it was a clear blue sky.

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There were no clouds.

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And the distinction of the silver objects, edges were just as clear as it could be.

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It wasn't fuzzy.

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You know, it was definitely kind of an oval shape object.

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And so after about 10 or 15 seconds of looking at this thing, trying to figure out whether it was a plane

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or what it could be, I simply just said to Bill over the intercom system, you know,

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I said to him, very calmly, I said, take a look out your left wing and tell me what you see.

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And so he looked over and immediately he saw it, you know, and replied to me,

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was, you know, what is it?

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What do you think it is?

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I said, I don't know.

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I'm trying to figure out whether it's a plane or, you know, a jet or whatever.

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And I've seen weather balloons, you know, I've seen hot air balloons from a distance.

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It didn't look anything like this, you know, and it would have been way too high for that anyway.

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And it would have been way out over the ocean because the direction we were looking was been,

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I'll say, like, we'd have been looking south-southeast.

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But, you know, it was kind of hard to make any type of depth perception as far as how far it was away from us.

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About the best, you know, recall the size of the object from me would be like holding a pencil out away from you

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and looking at the end of the eraser as far as size-wise in reference to the sky.

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And it would have put it approximately just over an area which is where we live,

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in Bass Harbor or Swan's Island or Flushench, God's Island, that area, now over the ocean.

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And like I said, it was higher than we were at the time when we spotted it.

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And we were in about a 10-degree right bank when I spotted it.

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And so we watched it there and Bill kept saying to me, well, what is it?

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And I said, I don't know what it is.

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About that time it started to move.

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And it moved at a very high rate of speed, faster than I've ever seen anything else move.

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And it moved from about our 9 o'clock position to about our 11 o'clock position and lower in altitude

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to where I had to literally kind of set up in the seat and look over the dash of the aircraft to see it.

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And we both thought, move.

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I couldn't believe how fast it was moving.

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And it came to that 11 o'clock position and just stopped there.

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I mean, it didn't vary one left or right or anything like that.

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It just stopped.

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Was that high rate of speed instantaneous?

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Yeah.

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Well, at first it started to move slowly and then it picked up speed, but it picked up speed very fast.

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You know what I mean?

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It didn't just from the stop position move real quick.

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It moved slowly first and then just moved at a speed that you wouldn't believe.

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To that 11 o'clock position and stopped there.

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And he lost it at that time because he looked back down at the instruments because he was flying the plane.

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But I was able to keep an eye on it.

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And so I looked up over the dash and from where it was at before at the 9 o'clock position to the 11 o'clock position,

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it had dimmed down.

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It wasn't as a bright metallic object, but it was gray.

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You could tell it was kind of a lightish gray.

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And it stopped there and I tried to point it out to him again and he saw it then.

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You know, I pointed to it and I looked down my arm and you can see it.

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He did. He saw it just for a second.

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And then it moved again real quick.

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That time it moved very quickly from 11 o'clock to like a 12 o'clock position in front of us.

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And it went from like a light of gray color to a kind of a rose red.

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And then it was like it didn't move left or right or towards us but like away from us at a very high speed of rate.

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But it caused the type of a presence of where it just kind of like disappeared.

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You know what I mean?

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From getting the size that it was to where I couldn't see it any longer so it had just disappeared.

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But I could tell in the aspects that it was going away from us.

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It had a very high rate of speed.

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And that direction would have put it hidden almost directly south.

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Okay.

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Now when we spotted it, or when I spotted it first, okay, we were flying a heading of about 0275, about south, south, west.

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And the sun was at about our two o'clock position.

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So when I first saw it, you know, it would have been like a reflection of the sun off of it.

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You know what I'm talking about as far as that kind of silveryish look.

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But it wasn't sublining that you couldn't look right at the object.

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I mean the object was a distinct shape.

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And like I said before, you could see a defined edge.

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There was no fuzzy enough or anything like that.

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Okay.

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What time did that occur?

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It happened at approximately 335 because I called the next day.

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We immediately after seeing this object called up ATC and Bangor and got on radar with them.

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And I talked to the lady that was the controller with us.

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And I asked her a bunch of questions, just in curiosity, if there was any airlines, you know, any military flight,

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anything of that sort in that area at the time that we came up on radar with them.

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And she looked back on the log and she said, no, there was no military flight.

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There was no airlines.

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I'm pretty, you know, I'm familiar with the airline routes around here.

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And most of all the European flights coming in are farther inland.

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You know, they come in off of Bangor's VOR.

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And so that puts them about 20, 25 miles inland.

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But she checked everything out, you know, because I told her I'd like to know if there was anything of that aspect.

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I even thought it might be some high-speed fighters that might have been escorting some of these missiles that they've been testing around here.

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But what the Navy does is they announce that about an hour before they do it.

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And ATC always has verifiable proof of that before they do it.

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And nothing like that was going on.

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Of course they wouldn't be coming to a standstill either.

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No, I mean, this was definitely not a...this was not a jet.

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Okay, how long do you feel you watched it?

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Gee, I think the total observation time of the whole thing was probably about a minute and 30 seconds.

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It seemed like about five minutes.

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Any problems with instrumentation and the craft, all of this inside?

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Yes. Yeah, we had trouble with our DME.

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And I mean, we were only six or seven miles from Bar Harbor at the time.

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And the DME and that beach craft is always right on.

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I mean, you know, you can always pick it up a good 60 miles away from Bar Harbor.

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Okay, now what does this DME stand for?

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It's distance measuring equipment.

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Okay.

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All right, and what it does is it's a frequency that's transmitted by the ADF localizer at Bar Harbor.

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And the DME is tuned in on that frequency, will calculate your speed, you know, and time and route, stuff like that.

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But that dropped completely out, which was unusual.

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But I noticed that before we even spotted the object.

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Because, you know, when you take off like that, you're checking your instruments, checking your gauges and stuff like that.

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And immediately I noticed a straight line through our DME readout.

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Okay, which is unusual because we usually at 4500 feet altitude, only six miles from Bar Harbor, we always get a good strong signal.

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And that was the only instrument that I noticed that was acting up on us.

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Did that come back to normal when the object was here?

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Yeah, about a minute or so after we, you know, didn't see the object anymore than the DME tuned back in.

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Okay.

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Okay, are we both the highly experienced pilots?

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Well, I've got 4500 hours as a commercial pilot.

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Okay.

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And he's got approximately 300 hours as a private.

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Okay.

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You were with the commercial airlines?

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No, I don't fly professionally anymore.

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Okay.

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I used to crop dust down in Texas for four or five years.

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Well, I sure appreciate your reporting that.

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We'd heard about this thing, but we never could get into it.

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Well, you know, it's one of those things that was a weird feeling after we had spotted it.

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It was not like we, I mean, it kind of spooked us a little bit.

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It spooked me because I didn't know what it was.

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And if it was an aircraft and it being at our 12 o'clock position and doing what it was doing,

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I didn't feel comfortable flying that direction.

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Yes.

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So we flew for about five minutes more.

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And we both kind of decided to turn around and fly back to Bar Harbor and not continue our flight.

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And it was not like we really talked amongst each other of exactly what it was.

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I mean, I knew what I saw and he knew what he saw, but it wasn't like we were bragging about it or anything like that.

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It was like we were in a state of shock.

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You know, we didn't really talk about it that much.

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Right.

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And, but then, you know, the more I thought about it, I tried to keep running it through my mind.

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It was exactly what it took place and what it looked like and everything else.

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And it wasn't but about a day or so later that him and I were sitting here at the table with my wife.

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And she said, well, have either one of you discussed as far as the shape of it?

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And we said, well, not really.

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You know, she said, well, you take a piece of paper and she gave the piece of paper to Bill and said, draw what you saw.

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You know, so I drew down on the paper exactly the object that I saw and he drew it down.

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And we both handed it to her and they were identical.

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I mean, it was identical to what we saw as far as, you know, the shape of the object.

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Okay.

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Well, we sure appreciate you reporting that.

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And if we get any follow-up information on this, I'll call you back.

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Okay.

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Another thing, Bob, I would be interested to know, I don't know if you do this or not, but if you have any type of UFO sightings around this area,

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is there any way that you could contact me to where I could kind of like, I'd like to come from the other direction because the paper wouldn't know if they wanted to put my phone number in the paper.

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I said, God, no, I don't want a bunch of fruitcakes calling me.

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But I figured if I came to you and explained to you that I'd like to know, you know, I'm sure you kind of filter out the unbelievable or whatever or something that really sounds realistic.

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And what I was thinking is if it came from you back to me, then I could follow it up the other direction, you know what I mean?

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Very.

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I'd call the people and talk with them and find out exactly what they saw and stuff like that because I'd be interested in doing that.

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Would you like some information, some pretty matter on other pilot reports?

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I'd love some.

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Okay.

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I'd really like some.

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Put them in the mail.

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I was really shocked when I called ATC and explained to them what I had saw and asked them if they saw anything on radar and they said no.

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But then a lady said, well, you should call the UFO Reporting Center and I said, what?

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She says, yeah, there's a number in Seattle that you can call, which I never knew existed.

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So I got the number from her, but, you know, I wanted to think about it for a while because, you know, how you kind of replay things back in your mind.

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You know, it was obvious that what Bill and I saw, we could not explain what it was.

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It was not an aircraft, we know that.

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And it didn't fly like any fighter that I've ever known, though.

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Okay, well, I thank you again.

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Great.

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Tell me that info, would you?

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We'll do.

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If you do get any reports, feel free to call me, okay?

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We'll do.

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Let me give you my business phone.

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Okay.

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Because I'm a dispatcher with the Ellsworth Police Department.

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So a lot of times when I'm not here, you get a hold of me there or at least leave a message there for me to call you.

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Okay.

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And that number is same area code 667-895-9.

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Okay, very good.

221
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Okay, thank you.

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Thanks, Bob.

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Okay.