It
has been several years since this event took place
so I can’t remember the exact date, or even a
year. The best I can do to narrow it down, is to
say that it happened several years after my last
move, which would roughly put it between 2003 and
2006. I do remember it was fall and late in the
afternoon, but still daytime; probably between 3
and 5 pm.
My girlfriend and I were
heading SW down Glover Road in Langley, BC. As she
was the one driving I had an unobstructed view of
the hills to my right and was musing myself
looking out the window. I noticed two perfectly
round objects moving in direction opposite from
ours, apparently gliding just a few degrees above
the hilltops. We often get to see hot air balloons
in this neighborhood, so the sight didn’t arouse
my suspicion at first. I said to her “Hey honey,
check out those balloons over there”. She was in
the middle of explaining something to me so she
glanced over and then continued talking. I kept
watching the two objects and quickly realized they
were actually quite different from hot air
balloons altogether. They were silver/gray in
color, not your typical Re/Max kind we normally
see around here. They were perfectly round with no
baskets underneath and were gliding across the
horizon too quickly for hot air balloons. Granted,
hot air balloons can sometimes be far enough not
to have a basket visible at all, but the same
basic inverted-teardrop shape is always present.
Then I remembered seeing a report on TV about a
brand-new type of weather station that was being
tested halfway across the country. They were
tethered massive white balls filled with helium
that can house personnel and weather instruments
inside, so I immediately assumed that’s exactly
what I was seeing. But these things were moving,
and at a pretty good clip, so once a realization
of that hit me I was starting to get rather
curious. I interrupted my girlfriend again and
said “Hey, I don’t think those are balloons!”. She
leaned over, glanced at them and said “Those are
hot air balloons, honey” and continued her story.
At this point a realization of the possibility
that these could turn out to be UFO’s started
creeping in, so I continued to watch them
intently. Shortly thereafter the rear object
suddenly reversed direction as if it bounced of an
invisible barrier. There was no slowing down, just
a sudden reverse of direction. I interrupted her
again “Honey, this one just went the other way,
I’m pretty sure this one can’t be a hot air
balloon”. She looked at me, than at the balloons,
than back at me and dismissively continued with
her story.
I felt funny, there was
something rather extraordinary happening to my
right, and something rather mundane on my left.
Her persistence and continuation of the story was
making this unusual event a rather “normal” part
of the day, and the weirdness of what I was
witnessing was wearing off fast. But I wasn’t
about to stop watching these two things now, so I
peeled my eyes wide open and continued staring in
the same direction. After few seconds the rear
object reversed its direction as suddenly and
unexpectedly as the first time and started picking
up speed. Within 10 or so seconds it caught up
with the first object and matched its speed. I
said to my girlfriend “Honey I think these are
UFOs”. She looked at them one more time and said
“Honey, they’re barely off the ground. They’re hot
air balloons”. She had a point, it was a weekend
afternoon, broad daylight, and these things
appeared to be barely 200ft up in the air right
above residential area of Langley. Besides she had
a story to tell. She continued gabbing while I
watched these two objects slowly descend behind
the ridge. At this point I realized that if they
were indeed UFO’s they would have had to be seen
by few hundred people to say the least, so I was
going to know in a day’s time one way or another.
I suspiciously twisted my neck a few more times as
we continued on, hoping I would catch one more
glimpse of them, maybe rising up from behind the
ridge. But I never saw them again. And this is
where the weird part began.
I mentioned earlier that the
entire event felt quite mundane, probably due to a
very “normal” set of circumstances. Besides being
a bright afternoon, we were very close to Langley
airfield, and surely someone somewhere would have
noticed something on radar if there was something
out of place. I guess I must have expected UFOs to
appear in desert areas where witnesses would be a
few to none, and this was the least likely setting
for this kind of event; we were practically home!
The following few days revealed nothing in the
paper, radio or TV, so I started forgetting about
the incident. It must have been between a week and
10 days after the event that I was listening to a
radio interview. The guest was a UFO expert whose
name I can’t remember anymore. He was talking
about a sudden increase in the number of UFO
sightings across the world. He mentioned he had a
reason to believe the increase was concentrated in
several hotspots around the globe. He started
naming them and said “…and British Columbia as of
recently…”. The host seemed curious and had
questioned him further about it. He said “yes,
there were a number of sightings several days ago,
of a large round object of silvery or gray color
in broad daylight right around your area. And the
strange thing is that the same object was reported
being seen in several places on Vancouver Island,
including Victoria at roughly the same time”. My
jaw dropped. I stopped doing whatever I was doing
at the time hoping I would hear the mention of
Vancouver or Langley, but there was none. At the
end of the interview the guest left a number of
website addresses and I went to one to check it
out. On it I found the number for reporting a
sighting, so I called. I was hoping someone on the
other line would tell me that “sure, hundreds of
other people saw the same thing at the same place”
but all I ever got was an answering machine. I
left a brief anonymous report and that was the end
of this affair. This was the National UFO
Reporting Centre in Seattle.
So the strange thing in this
whole event, at least to me, is not so much that I
saw two unidentified flying objects in the sky.
The strange thing is that I was the only one that
saw them (excluding my disbelieving girlfriend) in
spite of being a lot farther from them than anyone
underneath them. The strange thing is that the
objects got so low behind a rather low hill that
it appeared they would had to have touched down or
nearly touched down in a very busy area of Langley
in broad daylight. I do have to ask myself if it
is indeed possible that what I witnessed was a set
of hot air balloons, while my mind went on to play
the wildest game on me ever. I do have to ask
myself if it really was just a coincidence that a
similar object was seen elsewhere by a great
number of people. And I have to admit to myself
that all of the above must be possible. There are
over 6 billion people on this planet, and I
believe that by statistic alone some of us would
had to have experienced a rather fantastic mind
trick. Who knows? It sure felt real to me, and it
lasted several minutes.
Whatever I saw
didn’t look like an airplane, hot air balloon,
or any other aircraft I’m familiar with. I have
been teaching flying professionally for a number
of years and had my share of time around
aircraft of all kinds and sizes. Yes, I am an
admitted UFO believer, and yes, I do believe
extraterrestrial visitations take place. If that
muddies this report, than so be it. I’m not
doing this for publicity and I’m submitting this
anonymously. As a matter of fact after I first
reported this to NUFORC I considered this matter
closed. I am only revisiting this event because
I have been asked to by someone interested in
seeing this reported in Canada too.
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