Recreation of the Silvertown, South Korea encounter, in which a paralyzed witness watched a hooded, cloaked figure glide toward him across his apartment floor.
THINK ABOUTIT ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
1978-80: The Cloaked Visitor of Silvertown, South Korea
Sometime between 1978 and 1980, a U.S. Air Force airman stationed at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea woke on the floor of his darkened off-base apartment to find a large, hooded, dark-cloaked figure standing in the doorway, gliding toward him without footsteps while his body refused every order to move or make a sound.
Date: Undocumented — witness states only “between 1978-1980”; no specific year, month, or day given
Sighting Time: Undocumented — witness gives no time, only that he woke in a darkened room at night
Day/Night: Night
Location: Silvertown (off-base housing area), near Kunsan Air Base, South Korea
Urban or Rural: Urban (military housing) — the witness lived in a housing compound off-base, outside the local town of Silvertown
No. of Entity(‘s): 1
Entity Type: Humanoid/shadowy figure — described as a large dark figure in a hooded cloak or cape
Entity Description: A large dark figure wearing what appeared to be a hooded cloak or cape, dark grey or black in color. It did not appear to walk but seemed to glide across the floor toward the witness. No facial features, limbs, or other physical details were described.
Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter III) as originally filed — close observation of an animate being. See Researcher’s Notes: no physical craft or object was reported in association with the entity, which is a significant departure from the standard CE-III definition.
Duration: Several minutes, per the witness’s description of the struggle to move or make sound
No. of Object(s): 0 reported — no physical craft was observed during this encounter
Description of the Object(s): Not Applicable — no object reported
Shape of Object(s): Not Applicable
Size of Object(s): Not Applicable — no craft reported; the entity itself was described only as “large”
Color of Object(s): Not Applicable — only the entity’s dark grey/black cloak was described
Distance to Object(s): Approximately 3 to 4 feet — the entity approached to within this distance before the witness’s account of the encounter ends
Height & Speed: Gliding — the entity did not appear to walk but seemed to glide across the floor
Number of Witnesses: 1 — the witness’s wife was present in the room but asleep and did not witness the entity
Special Features/Characteristics: The witness experienced temporary paralysis and inability to vocalize, which resolved gradually as he struggled to call out. The room, initially visible without any light source, became harder to see once the paralysis broke and the figure was gone. The witness explicitly notes uncertainty about whether this was a dream and cannot recall whether alcohol was involved that night.
Case Status: Insufficient Data — single-witness account, recalled and submitted years after the fact, with no corroborating witness (the witness’s wife was asleep throughout) and no physical evidence tied specifically to this event
Source: National UFO Reporting Center
Summary/Description: I can’t recall the year, but it was between 1978-1980. I was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea. I was living off base inside a housing compound, outside the local town called Silvertown. There was no light in the one-roomed apartment, yet when I looked, I could see clearly. I remember waking up on the floor. My wife was on the bed to my left and slightly behind me. My attention was drawn to the direction of the doorway. I saw a large dark figure standing in the door. The figure seemed to be wearing a hooded cloak or cape. I think it was dark grey or black in color. I sat there just staring at it when it seemed to start approaching me. It didn’t appear to be walking. It seemed to glide across the floor. I tried to back away from it but couldn’t move. I tried to call for my wife but couldn’t make any sound. Although my body refused to respond to my efforts to move, I can remember thinking that if I could make a sound, the fear, and the figure, would go away. While I can remember it moving toward me, I don’t remember it traveling the distance of the room to where I was laying. That is to say, I only remember it moving a distance of about 3 or 4 feet. I can’t recall it ever actually reaching me. My struggle to move or make some kind of sound seemed to go on for several minutes. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was desperately trying to call for my wife. Suddenly, I managed to make a whisper/squeak of a noise. I tried again and the noise came easier this time. Finally, I was calling my wife’s name. I could move as well, although it was extremely difficult. I dragged myself to our bed. I reached up and as I was about to touch my wife, everything was back to normal, if you can call it that. The stranger was gone. So was the loss of my voice and my inability to move. However, the room was darker and it was harder to see. I was still on the floor and my wife was sleeping soundly on the bed. My heart began to slow down and the pounding reduced itself to a normal beating. I just sat there. To this day, I can still recall parts of this incident with great clarity. But I’m not sure if it was a dream. I don’t recall if I had been drinking alcohol that night but it is a very real possibility. Nor do I understand why I was on the floor instead of the bed with my wife. I don’t know if my wife recalls any of this. I don’t even remember if I ever talked to my wife about this, but through the years, I’ve told this story to others when the topic of strange things comes up.
The witness also describes a broader lifetime pattern of anomalous personal experiences, which he offered as context rather than as part of the Silvertown event itself — see Detailed Report.
Related Cases: Undocumented — no confirmed related case identified in the archive at this time
Detailed Report
The core Silvertown account is a single, internally detailed memory: a U.S. Air Force airman off-base near Kunsan Air Base woke on his apartment floor, rather than in bed beside his sleeping wife, to see a large, dark, hooded figure in the doorway that advanced toward him without visible footsteps while his body and voice refused to respond. The witness is careful to flag his own uncertainty throughout — he does not rule out that this was a dream, cannot recall whether he had been drinking, and does not know whether his wife, who slept through the entire event, has any memory of it or was ever told. The paralysis and loss of voice resolved gradually as he struggled to make sound, and the account ends with the room returning to normal, if less clearly lit than before, once he reached his wife’s side. Alongside this core event, the witness volunteers an extensive personal history of other unexplained experiences spanning nearly two decades and four different postings: a shadowy figure glimpsed in a chair at Beale AFB, California around 1976-77 followed by being inexplicably locked out of his own room; disorientation and apparent missing/gained time during 1982-83 at RAF Lakenheath, UK; anticipatory anxiety while driving an unlit road at Hurlburt Field, Florida in 1991-92; a roughly two-minute discrepancy on a factory floor in Siloam Springs, Arkansas in 1996-97; and an unexplained ten-minute gain on a twenty-minute drive near the University of Arkansas. He also mentions childhood nasal scabbing and unexplained “scoop” marks on his leg and hand, first noticed years apart. These are presented here as the witness’s own reported life narrative and self-identified pattern, offered for context — not as independently verified or causally connected events. No physical evidence, medical documentation, or second witness corroborates any of these later incidents in relation to the 1979 Silvertown event specifically.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The Cloaked Visitor — Silvertown 1978-80 and the Limits of a Lifetime Narrative
- Classification Assessment: CE-III is retained as the originally filed classification, but it is a poor fit on strict Hynek terms: the standard defines CE-III as close observation of an animate being associated with a UFO, and no craft or object was reported here at all — the witness’s own field explicitly says “0 reported.” This is better understood as a humanoid/entity encounter without an associated craft, a category Hynek’s original scale doesn’t cleanly cover. The classification is kept for archive consistency but should be read with that caveat attached.
- Source Chain Assessment: The previous version of this page listed a specific date (January 1, 1979) and time (03:00) presented as established fact. Neither appears anywhere in the witness’s own account — he states only that the event occurred “between 1978-1980” and gives no time of night at all. Both fields have been corrected to Undocumented. This is a single, decades-later, first-person recollection reported directly to the National UFO Reporting Center, with no contemporaneous documentation and no corroborating witness, since the witness’s wife was asleep throughout.
- Evidentiary Weight and Alternate Explanation: The core presentation — waking paralysis, an inability to speak or move, a looming humanoid figure at the threshold, a sensation of it approaching without footsteps, and gradual resolution as the witness struggles to vocalize — closely matches the well-documented clinical phenomenon of sleep paralysis with hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucination, a recognized and common experience unrelated to any non-human phenomenon. The witness himself raises this possibility indirectly, noting he isn’t sure if it was a dream and can’t rule out alcohol. This alternate explanation deserves equal footing with any stranger interpretation, not a secondary mention.
- Pattern and Life-Narrative Context: The witness frames his later experiences — at Beale AFB, RAF Lakenheath, Hurlburt Field, and in Arkansas — as part of a personal pattern he has puzzled over for years, and that framing is preserved here as his own. However, this report does not establish an evidentiary link between the 1979 Silvertown encounter and those later, geographically and temporally scattered incidents. Presenting the “scoop” marks as confirmed biological sampling or the time discrepancies as confirmed evidence of monitoring, as a previous version of this page did, goes beyond what the witness himself claims and beyond what the source material supports; both remain unexplained personal experiences, not established physical evidence of alien intervention.
- Geographic and Historical Context: Kunsan Air Base has hosted U.S. Air Force personnel in South Korea since the Korean War era, and off-base military housing communities near the base, such as the one described here, were common through the late 1970s and 1980s. No specific pattern of similar entity encounters tied to Kunsan or the surrounding Silvertown area has been identified in the archive to date.
Stripped of the invented date, the invented time, and the confident claims of implants and space-time disruption that a previous version of this page attached to it, what remains is a single, carefully hedged memory: a paralyzed witness, a cloaked figure at the door, and the witness’s own honest uncertainty about whether it was ever more than a dream. That uncertainty is worth preserving rather than resolving for him. The case stands as Insufficient Data — a genuine and clearly remembered experience, but not one corroborated by any second witness or physical evidence tied to the night itself.
“I can remember thinking that if I could make a sound, the fear, and the figure, would go away.”
