High Strangeness in the Skies too close to the Ground

Soon after men working on my Dad’s farm swore they saw two “flying saucer” UFOs with colored lights zoom between the two silos attached to the outside of the cowbarn, ball lightning knocked down all the cows. At least we think those orbs were ball lightning, but we weren’t completely certain. These events occurred on Riverview Dairy Farm near the village of Rice in Prince Edward County where we lived in the rolling Piedmont region of Virginia. 

This was sometime during the mid-1970s. My brother Joe and I played with the three Vernon brothers and the two Moore brothers. Their fathers worked the local dairy farms milking cows, fixing machinery, and throwing hay. Recently we thought we had seen a flying saucer UFO while out exploring in the woods one evening. The more we studied the machine and its light patterns high in the sky, however, we realized it was a common, small airplane viewed upon the steep angle of the land as we climbed out of a steep gully into the field. One can read about that incident in my article here, “The UFO that wasn’t.”

Apparently the farmers, hardened men not incline to make up nonsensical stories, saw two small UFOs. They were described as little flying saucers, silver or aluminum-colored, with a ring of colored lights around the outer rim of their discs. The saucers flew over the farm from the south somewhere. Then they turned quickly on a hard right turn and shot thru the narrow gap between the two silos over the high, tin roof of the cowbarn. Those two machines behaved as if they were performing, indeed, as one man declared, “showing off.” Once thru, both accelerated and vanished. They were so fast it wasn’t clear if they disappeared because they flew on out of view or winked out of visible existence. Was daytime and the sky was clear with a few clouds.  Continue reading →