2008: Large V-Shaped UFO Seen over California

From the UFO Casebook… originally posted on MUFON.

California-11-14-08-My girlfriend and I were leaving her house to go to dinner just after 8:00 pm at Woodlake Ave. and Saticoy Blvd. Both of us were seated in my convertible with the top down. I remember there were terrible brush fires just to the north of us near Santa Clarita and the smell of smoke was heavy in the air.

Before I started my car to back out of her driveway I noticed a unusually large object in the northeastern sky that caught my attention. I have always been an airplane buff, I spent hours as a kid listening to my aircraft radio, always at the end of some runway, always one eye toward the sky, built untold plastic models.

So I know planes and can spot and classify military aircraft on sight. I have been to untold air shows and really enjoy the most exotic of aircraft, and what I saw that Friday evening frightened the hell out of me. I pointed it out to my girlfriend and she asked what it was, I replied, “Looks like a friggin’ UFO to me babe!”

Just between her and her neighbor’s house, low in the northeastern sky from up here in the foothills, an absolutely enormous V-shaped craft was lazily headed due north. Its lack of forward speed almost suggested a lighter than air vehicle if it was a reasonably sized craft, but I knew what I was seeing was either a distorted sense of scale, or this “V” had to be several hundreds of feet across MINIMUM!

There were numerous red lights visible from the lower rear, three quarters degree view we had, so we were at i’s “8 o’clock low” from its vantage. As far as the number of lights I cannot say for certain, I am now uncertain if they lined the forward leading edge perimeter, or were line abreast, across the bottom surface, (ventral) at right angle to the center line on the V.

There was a reddish glow emanating or reflecting off of the bottom, almost a shimmering, with some intricate fine detail barely visible underneath, through the reddish glow I first attributed to reflection from the nearby forest fire. There were no visible means of propulsion evident.

I cannot stress the lumbering slow movement of this object away from us ,and when it passed behind a neighbor’s leafless tree, I quickly sped 30 feet out of the driveway to gain a better unobstructed vantage again, away from the tree, no more than 5 seconds, it was gone!

I could not see any possible obstruction that could have prevented visual reacquisition. It just vanished! My girlfriend remembers being very aware then of numerous private and light commercial traffic in the sky, as there is always in the vicinity of the Van Nuys airport. I had this impression as well, but felt it was a result of such intense target fixation observing the object then having no stimulus directly forward tends to widen your perception from the tunnel vision we experienced.

We humans are predator by nature with both eyes fixed forward for expanded depth perception, keyed to movement. I wish I could say I photographed my sighting, but there are seldom good cameras when you need them around. I did make a crude animated .gif file the very next day to try and record the event to the best of my and my girlfriend’s recollection.

I didn’t come forward earlier because I have always scoffed and outwardly derided people who have claimed to have witnessed things like I now have. I didn’t want to be, “one of those people,” but I am now.

I’m not going to pilgrimage out to Roswell or anything or claim abduction stories, but I will share what I saw, and know to be seen by at least me and my girlfriend. Thank God she was there to back me up!

Lastly, this was above a major population area of more than 1.8 million in the valley alone, within easy visual range of one of the busiest private aviation airports in the world, Van Nuys airport. It doesn’t add up?

Casebook Reader Responds

In response to your story about the V shaped UFO over So Cal on November 14th, 2008, (see below), my family and I also saw it that night from our back deck in Calabasas. I immediately reported it to MUFON, and later spoke to them by phone. I also reported it to some other online sites.

For the next few days, I searched the Internet for others who may have seen it, but was unsuccessful. I did find a video shot on November 13th (a year earlier) in 2007, taken by two young women on their way from San Diego to Bakersfield off the 5 Freeway.

It showed the exact same craft we saw.

Earlier this month, I was searching the Net once again, and came across others who saw the triangle on Nov 14. This link shows one report from a family of four in Long Beach, in which one observer, a woman who is a technical advisor for military and police for film and television, saw the craft through high-powered binoculars.

It completely blew me away. She describes it as something out of “Battlestar Galactica,” complete with multi-level docking ports. She includes drawings in her post… see link to original post:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/sightings/usa/081114b.shtml

I have contacted her by phone and email, and found out that her husband works for the Dept of Defense. I believe that their description, along with the testimony of myself, and the three others in my group, as well as a couple in West LA, and now the two women in your story makes this a compelling sighting!

Thank you for including the article on your web site!

Sincerely,

Gina B.

Sighting report from UFO Info

11-14-08-Long Beach, California-Description: (I have an audio tape of our descriptions that was made minutes after the sighting. Too many lights made a photo impossible, and the report was made with another UFO outfit – here is the link:

http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2008/longbeachca11142008/longbeachca11142008.htm) The description is the taken from the notes I made that night, edited for space…

I can’t BELIEVE IT! My kids and I had just returned from speaking with a neighbor and walking the dog to find my husband watering the grass. We hung out with him for a couple of minutes before my son Shannon, whom I sky watch every night for an hour or two (our hobby), said “Hey mom… A triangle!”

It took about 20-30 seconds for me to see it because other than the front, which I initially mistook as an airplane, only the small red running lights were visible, giving the craft the appearance of a boomerang, but I saw the back lights, too, and this was a full triangle!

From our perspective, we saw it travel from over the ocean (SW) towards the LB Airport area (NE) and it looked like a triangle in perspective, so the sides were not “equal”, per say. IT WAS HUGE!

It was at a rather high altitude, compared to the other aircraft in the skies, and I looked at it through high-quality binoculars… The front of the craft, upon looking directly without help, could have been mistaken for a C-130 or C-17 with ALL of its lights on (running, take-off and landing).

When looking at it with the binocs, it was something out of Battlestar Galactica! I kid you not! It was multi-leveled and seemed to have 2 docking stations or something on the underside of the front of the craft, which was only 1/4 the size of the rest of it! I have drawings I can provide as well as the audio tape…

The “command center” (for lack of a better description) was HUGE in its own right! The sides of that part of the craft had at least 2, but up to 4-5 floors, 2 bright rows of what looked like windows with brilliant white light coming out of them that seemed to wrap around the front of it. IT looked like NOTHING I have seen in all of my 41 years!

The bottom of the “command center” had two structured holes that appeared to be parking structures for smaller scout crafts, but this is a speculation on its use. I could faintly make out floors inside of those holes that were about as large as a third of the front of the ship.

It was too large and going far too slow to stay in the sky, so conventional physics, as we know it, did not apply to this craft – whatever it was. It floated gracefully and very slowly. It also seemed to be utilizing some kind of “cloaking” technology because the back 3/4 of the ship ‘mirrored’ the night sky, so if it wasn’t for the running lights, we would not have seen more than the front part of the ship that would otherwise not have garnered our attention, because again, that section appeared, for all intents and purposes and to the naked eye, to be a large jet. The binoculars made the difference here, too. Our sighting lasted about 10-20 minutes.

Shortly after we spotted the ship in the sky, our dog went nuts! He was still on his leash, attached to the tow hitch on the back of my car and he pulled and pulled as he whined and barked to get away. He did my husband and Shannon went to get him while me and my youngest son continued to watch on top of our car until it went out of sight. Other dogs were barking, too.

This was the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been looking all over the internet to find anyone else that may have seen this thing. I found it this morning on your site, so I decided to make another report here, although I reported it to another site within minutes of the sighting.

If you’d like the drawings, let me know where to send them and I will get them to you! Thank you for your time.

TV/Radio: http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2008/longbeachca11142008/longbeachca11142008.htm

http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2008/longbeachca11142008/longbeachca11142008.htm
This is UFOs Northwest and a rather nice outfit. William is the owner and researcher running the site and because of how long we are looking up every night, we have made 2 prior reports that were unexplained.

Thank you for posting these sightings and thank you to the woman in Los Angeles who had the strength to report to you! Yeah! We aren’t insane!

My husband works in Law Enforcement for the Department of Defense and I am in police and military technical advising for television and film, just so you are aware. We both have extensive knowledge of conventional and some unconventional aircraft and this was like nothing we’ve ever seen.

Fourth Report Received, March 14, 2008

I was walking my Scotty dog after dark at 6:42 and looked up in the sky and saw a large v-shaped grouping of lights, it seemed about 6 or so starlight intensity lights on each side of the leading edges of the wings of the “v”.

The only thing I can compare it to would be the flying wing bombers of the 50s except all I saw were the lights. I first thought it was a jet, but it was too big, flying too slowly, and not making any noise for it to be so big/close to the ground if it was that close.

There was no way to scale the object, which makes it somewhat frustrating. I was trying my best to figure out what size the object was as I was watching it in total disbelief. I held on to a light pole to steady myself as I was looking up at it fly from south to a north/slightly northeast direction.

The only speed I could compare it to would be a jet at crushing altitude of 40,000 feet, so it seemed to be flying somewhat slow. At that height its size would be very small.

I read later about someone in Brazil who saw something that she was able to scale with her fingers held 3 to 4 inches apart at arm’s distance. That is how big the object seemed to me. It seemed to be BIG.

The lights were the color of dim starlight, so it wasn’t something that would stand out and would be easily overlooked unless you had the fortunate opportunity to look directly in its direction. If 90 degrees was straight up, I saw it at an angle of about 70 degrees, 20 degrees to the west from straight up.

It did have red blinking lights at the ends of the wings, one red light on the wing on the far side of me, and two red blinking lights on the side closest to me. I usually look up at the all the planes flying around the area, and my location being about 6 to 7 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, there are a lot of planes in the sky.

The object crossed the flight path of planes landing at LAX coming in from the ocean flying from west to east before they turn over downtown L. A. to fly into the airport. I thought planes flying in the air would have had to of seen it, how could they not unless it was higher than they were.

Without anything to scale it to, there was no way of knowing how big or how fast it was going, and this is what is still frustrating to me, that I can’t figure something that defies any logical explanation or description.

One thing I did make sure to do was to see if the object would block out any stars/starlight that it passed under. The starlight was not blocked out, even between the lights at the leading edge of the object. I can only assume the lights were on the leading edge of the object, but maybe they were at the bottom of it, as it passed from view at about 30 degrees from the horizon.

Also deciduous trees were beginning to hide it from view. If it weren’t for the trees I would have seen it at its end as the guy and his girlfriend in the San Fernando Valley would be beginning to see it at 7 PM as they had mentioned in their description.

A few minutes prior to 6:42 PM, a neighbor with his dog was walking away from the object’s direction and a jogger was also headed away as well. They both passed us and disappeared from view.

When I saw it I was totally alone except for the dog who was sniffing a bush, she wouldn’t have cared if she saw anything anyway. It was a situation of wanting to shout “Hey come out and look at this!” but I didn’t want to take my eyes off of it for fearing of losing my sight of it.

It seemed somewhat majestic and beautiful slowly flying across the sky, I thought, as I was looking at it. My nickname for it is also “Battlestar Galactica,” and I have referred to it as that since I saw it. I only today, March 8, 2009, have read the other peoples’ descriptions, the people from the San Fernando Valley (MUFON 14894), and the family from Long Beach, so I am another who can be added to the list and am wondering who else could have seen it, as it flew over an area of millions of people.

I called KTLA Channel 5 and talked to someone there about it, as I expected other people who saw it would call in and maybe it would have been mentioned in the 10 o’clock news that night, but it never was talked about. There have to be many others who will hopefully someday read of our shared experience and also write of this fantastic, although unsettling experience.

It is something that I think about almost every day when I have some time to myself. Hopefully I have remembered most of the pertinent information. Unfortunately I do not have a computer and am using my mother’s computer. I have left information that will allow those at MUFON to contact me, and I would like some day to meet the people in the Valley, specifically, as it was unbelievable that he was describing the direction and time frame of the object as it passed from the South, where I was, to the North, to where they were, within the approximate time frames.

Thanks,

Mark