The year was somewhen around 1975-1978.The location, Roanoke county Virginia. The people, myself, my sister Charlotte, our parents and our neighborhood friend we will call ‘Bonnie’ for this story.
So it was a normal late summer evening. Our family had gone to a popular Italian restaurant for dinner called Villa Sorento. At the time it was located in downtown Roanoke city, we lived out in Roanoke County off Rt 419.
As it was late Summer the sun was still setting after our dinner. The sky more peach, orange, and gold then blue. I recall it as one of those perfect cloudless, warm evenings.
Leaving the restaurant and heading home we could see a bright light over Sugar loaf mountain. We lived at the eastern base of Sugarloaf. Of course we knew it had to be Venus the evening star. U.F.O’s were something on “In Search of, “ but it was still fun to imagine. Being bouncy children we insisted our parents follow the evening star home. This was easily done as it was in the direction we had to go anyway. There was little to no traffic so the drive was fairly quick.
As we neared the mountain we realized ‘Venus’ was staying in position to the mountain and becoming slightly larger. I don’t recall very clearly as we were only just realizing this wasn’t normal. Cresting Glen Heather drive, looking across Rt 419 to our neighborhood it was clear that it was something hovering there. No flashing lights of an aircraft. It was giving off a brilliant white light but there was clearly something in there. There was no traffic so we proceeded home across Rt 419
As we drove to our street we could see it hovering to our left. It was a LARGE object, like a funny shaped hot air balloon. We didn’t draw that analogy at the time.
What we saw as we approached was not a ball of light, the light was reflecting off the object. As we approached it became possible to see more past the brilliant white glare.
The object was mostly a beige ( highlights) to gray ( shadows) in color. It looked like an inverted bee skeep hanging under a three bladed ship or plane propeller. I wondered how it was that something with propellers like a helicopter could fly if they weren’t spinning?
By this point Dad had stopped the car. We were in front of Bonnie’s house in our big old dark green Oldsmobile Delta 88. Affectionately known as ‘The Tank.’
As the craft was hovering to the left, over the houses, Charlotte and Mom slid over to my side to look out the windows and see it. Mom said to stay in the car (meaning don’t roll the windows down and hang out them.)
I recall the ‘propellers’ were a steel to gun metal grey. They seemed shiny. No designs or markings.
The ‘skeep’ was more matt beige-gray ( the beige was probably a reflection of the orange evening sky) and each tier (sorry, I cannot recall how many) had a ring of tiny round lights on it. Some,however, were dark. For the most part I recall them as white, maybe a few pastel tones here and there. Several were dark as if the ‘lights’ were out.
My immediate thought was it was like portholes on a cruise ship. That perhaps that is what this was, an alien cruise ship come to tour our planet.
The very center, lowest, tier was all a red light. It was neat to look at because you couldn’t focus on it. It was all mottely and kinda swimmy. At the time we did not have laser toys, but aim ‘the dot’ at a white wall and stare at it. That’s what it was like. Or looking into a red stop light. So I think it was some sort of laser light, but I saw nothing on the ground affected by it.
Suddenly the craft began shrinking, I mean it got small FAST! And then it seemed to shoot off to the right and up. We realized it hadn’t shrunk. It had in fact shot straight up and away from us. Because it was above us there were no reference points for size or speed. All this time there had been no sound or wind either.
At this point, either Charlotte or I asked what it was, since it clearly wasn’t Venus or a hot air balloon. Mom said it was an experimental government aircraft. Given mom’s military side of the family that was a good enough answer for us.
Dad took the Tank out of park and we finished the drive home. All that was said was Mom saying we wouldn’t discuss this as it wasn’t anything.
The next evening I was riding my bike and saw Bonnie in her yard and stopped to play and tell her of the Airforce thing we had seen over her house.
Bonnie turned pale and said she didn’t think it was an airforce plane. Bonnie was about 10 years older and so she had been home alone the night before (we hadn’t seen a car in their driveway that night) she said she had not felt well (it was a migraines as I recall. Something that plagued her regularly.) So when her folks went out for dinner she planned to stay in bed and rest. Her parents were going to bring her back something later. She said she had taken a nap and had a really weird dream while they were gone.
Bonnie said that she dreamed she woke up and it was still light out. She saw a small ‘man’ who was all white, big head, big dark eyes, no hair and a little mouth. He was short, about 4 ft I think. He was standing in the hall way looking in the room at her. He saw her look at him and fled to the right down the hall. She leaped from the bed and gave chase but he was faster. She heard it go down the basement stairs from the living room. She then heard the basement door slam and she ran to the living room window that looked out over the back yard.
She saw 2 of the white men run across the back yard to a white-ish disk that was floating it seemed over the fence just this side of the line of pine trees separating it from the swiming pool behind them ( this is technically an easement between the swimming pool and neighborhood properties. Most of the yards at the time were fenced as I recall as was the pool property. )The men ran ‘under’ the disk and a moment later it rose higher and seemed to float along the fence and easement heading west.
Bonnie said she didn’t know why, but she didn’t feel upset about it, or them being in her house anymore. She just felt sleepy so she went back to bed. When her parents came home and woke her it was dark out. She told them what she dreamed.She knew it was a dream because everything was fine in the house, the basement door was locked and if someone had been in the house she certainly would not have just gone back to bed.
When I told her about what we saw it made her really upset and she went to tell her parents. Nothing else came of it, but a year later they moved and we lost touch.
