193?: Large” Ball Of White Light Overhead

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THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTING REPORT

Date: 1930’s

Sighting Time: 9:00 p.m.

Day/Night: Night

Location: Southern West Virginia

Urban or Rural: Rural

Hynek Classification: CE-I (Close Encounter I) Observation of an object in close proximity to the witness (i.e. within 500’)

Duration:

No. of Object(s):  1

Size of Object(s): large

Distance to Object(s):

Shape of Object(s): “large” ball of white light

Color of Object(s): white

Number of Witnesses: 1

Source:

Summary/Description: This possible UFO sighting occurred around the mid to late 1930s in southern West Virginia. It occurred about 3 miles distant from the sighting my grandma had earlier in that decade of a possible UFO.

James, whose brother had married into our family, was a no-nonsense kind of person. A hard worker, who raised a large family, he was also known as one who was “afraid of nothing and no one”. On the night this happened, James had left the church which let out around 9:00 p.m. He had a long walk to his home down a country road known as Saw Mill Road. Often, especially after church services or revivals, groups of people would be walking together on the road to their respective homes. Whether or not James had such a company for a while isn’t known, but he was definitely by himself when this event happened. As to whether anyone else in the area on their way home may have witnessed something unusual in the skies that night is unknown.

At any rate, not too far from the church, the road had a steep uphill grade. It was banked by a forest on one side and a small meadow below on the right. As James reached the top of this hill, he began to feel uncomfortable. He wasn’t afraid or spooked by anything, but the feeling that overcame him caused him to be wary. As we use to say “to put one’s guard up”. He looked around as he walked, but saw nor heard anything unusual.

He had reached the bottom of the hill and had walked less than five minutes further when something caused him to look behind him. It was never made clear whether it was a sound, a flash of light, or that feeling that someone was following that caused him to do this. But in doing so, what he saw was a “large” ball of white light suspended very low and very near him. One thing he knew for certain about this was — it wasn’t the moon. If James expressed sheer fear he never indicated it to his family when telling the story. In fact, there was never any indication that he was so frightened that he bolted.

His exact words were “the faster I walked, the faster it picked up speed”. The object kept right up with him. It never attempted to overcome him or outdistance him. Instead, it tagged along behind him on the long road like a wary dog for approximately another mile. When James reached the forks of the Saw Mill Road, the white ball of light had suddenly disappeared. “I looked one second and it was there. The next, it was gone.” He had not witnessed whether it sped away or just blinked out.

Someone in later years suggested that the white ball of light might have been something like “swamp gas” or some such phenomena as that. I find it difficult to believe that a ball of “swamp gas” would tag along behind someone, making every twist and turn of the road, for a mile or so as this one did. As far as I know, James never offered an explanation himself as to what he thought it might be. Given his character, I believe he just told the events as they happened and somewhere in his mind classified it as something that was profoundly out of the ordinary in his life. Something, as it turned out, would never happen again to him.