Date: September 24, 2010
Time: Approx: 5:30 p.m.
Hello Brian, I'm writing because I Googled "box-shaped object sky Indiana" and instantly came to this article: http://the-v-factor-paranormal.blogspot.com/2010/07/large-box-shaped-ufo-seen-on-i-80.html
I Googled that particular phrase because I saw something odd in the sky about a week ago.
My wife and I live in Texas and had flown into Indianapolis on Friday, Sep 24, 2010. We were heading to Lafayette for a couple of days, and rented a car to make the last leap of the journey. We were on the road and leaving Indianapolis by about 5:00pm that evening. Not too far into our drive, I noticed something peculiar in the sky. At this point, we were on I-465 and close to exiting onto I-65. It would have been in the general 5:30'ish pm time frame. Still broad daylight outside.
So as I was driving, an object in the sky caught my eye. It was pretty much straight ahead and low to the horizon. Distance to the object was very hard to judge, but it wasn't close. If I were forced to put a number to the distance I would guesstimate in the 3 - 5 mile range. If it was indeed that far out, thinking about what a large commercial airliner would look like at any of those distances, this would have been several times larger.
What I saw was a rectangle, plain and simple! It was roughly two and a half to three times longer than it was tall, with sharp corners. It was dull gray in color, several shades darker than the (clear) sky behind it, but not overly attention grabbing.
I didn't notice any lights or reflections. It was moving at what I would call a slow pace, from our left to right (so east, to east-northeast). It was low enough that we would lose sight of it behind the trees as we drove.
I pointed it out to my wife and said something along the lines of "hey look, a UFO!". At the time, I was just joking. I will be the first to admit that I'm fascinated with UFO stories. I don't know that I fully believe that we are, or have been visited, but I'm open to the idea. My wife just rolls her eyes and leaves the room if I'm watching a show on UFO's. :) So we have a difference of opinions there and I was pointing it out just to push her buttons, fully expecting to explain the object as we got closer.
We never really seemed to get closer to it though. We were able to see it for at least 5 minutes and although traffic was heavy, it was flowing fine at the time so we were going 60mph or so. This is about the only thing I have to base my distance estimate above on. It was moving away from us at about 90 degrees, so as we got closer to where it would have crossed the road, it had moved on along its own path and we eventually lost it for good due to trees along the road.
While I can't tell you what it was, I can tell you what it was not. It was not a meteor, a cloud, swamp gas, a satellite, or the space station. It was absolutely, positively not a jet, a prop plane, or a helicopter. If I am completely wrong on the distance scale and it was considerably closer than I'm saying, then given it's size in the sky, we would have been able to clearly make out traditional features like propellers, rotors, wings, etc. There were none.
We actually were never able to make out any "depth" to the object either. It may have just been the way that we were lined up with it the entire time, but it was more like a flat plane (as in a two-dimensional surface, not as in "airplane"). This made both my wife and I comment that it must be an advertisement banner being pulled by a small airplane. The speed it appeared to be moving would have been acceptable for that scenario. But there was no small airplane and no discernable text or graphics on the "banner".
I have never seen a rectangular blimp/airship (again, there were absolutely no rounded corners on this, draw a normal rectangle on a piece of paper and that is the exact shape we saw!), but after excluding jets, prop planes, and helicopters, that is the only manmade flying "thing" that my brain has left for an explanation. Despite that process of elimination, the same brain is also saying "ehh, that wasn't a blimp".
In short, neither my wife or I have an explanation for what we saw, and that is why I went looking on the Internet for others who might have seen it and been curious. It was rush-hour traffic, so there were plenty of eyes pointed in the same direction as ours. As I mentioned initially, the object wasn't exactly screaming for attention (muted in color, low on the horizon, and no lights or fast movement) so I can completely understand it escaping the attention of a high percentage of people who were paying more attention to traffic than I was. But surely someone saw it!
For the record, I am 37 and have worked in the IT field for about 16 years now. Photography is a pretty serious hobby of mine, and I usually go to at least one air show per year to photograph. That certainly doesn't make me a professional witness, but I've got a pretty good concept of what "normal" objects in the sky look like. My wife doesn't share my love of air shows, but she is a tenured engineering professor at a major university, so she has her fair share of brains and logic upstairs.
On the topic of photography, I'm kicking myself because I had my camera with me, but made a very conscious decision that I wouldn't need my 500mm lens on this trip, so I opted to pack lighter and I left it at home. I wouldn't have been able to capture anything of usable detail with the lenses I did have with me (I hate pictures where there's a speck that someone is claiming it is a UFO or a ghost or Big Foot or Elvis!), so I didn't bother getting off of the Interstate and trying to find a safe place to stop because it would have just made us late and frustrated me when I saw that I didn't have anything to show for it.
Anyway, we live happy normal lives and are simply curious about what we saw, not making wild claims and definitely not seeking publicity. If you hear anything more, I would certainly enjoy hearing about it!
Thanks.
If you have seen anything like this in the same area please be kind enough to contact Brian Vike at: sighting@telus.net with the details of your sighting. All personal information is kept confidential.
Sightings.com website: http://www.sightings.com/
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