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.
