A Galax Virginia sighting
October 26th, 1987, is a date that sits in my memory with absolute clarity, anchored by a moment that defied everything I understood about the sky. We were driving back home to Galax after a birthday visit with my grandmother. When we were nearing Wytheville, the conversation simply stopped. It wasn’t a choice; it was as if we were all reacting to the same invisible command to look up.
Above the treeline, three massive black triangles were moving in perfect, silent union. They were so large they seemed to swallow the stars as they slowly drifted across the horizon, lacking any lights or the sound of an engine that might have betrayed their origin. It felt less like watching a flight and more like observing a slow, deliberate migration of something entirely alien. It was a surreal, paralyzing sight that lasted long enough for the initial shock to harden into a lingering, cold dread. We weren’t the only ones witnessing the incursion, either. By the time we reached home, the talk had already started—the state police and the commonwealth’s attorney had been out on the road as well, forced to stop their vehicles and stare at the same silent, obsidian shapes dominating the Virginia night.
1987 Highway Encounter
Back in1987, while I was still in school, I was driving across the mountain from Rich Valley over toward Marion. It was one of those unremarkable trips that suddenly turned into something I still can’t wrap my head around. I happened to look up at the sky and just froze. There, hovering low over the ridgeline, was a massive group of these things—there had to be at least fifty of them. They weren’t moving fast, just hanging there in the air, completely still. They looked like tiny, bubble-like objects, definitely smaller than a helicopter, and they were sitting so low that it felt like you could reach out and touch them. The sheer number of them, just clustered there in the silence, triggered an instinct in me that I’ve never felt before or since. My heart was pounding, and I turned to the friend I was with and just said, “We need to get out of here right now.” We didn’t stick around to find out what they were or where they came from; we just got out of there as fast as the road would let us. To this day, I still don’t have any explanation for what I saw that afternoon, but the image of those fifty bubbles hovering over the mountain is something that has stayed with me for nearly forty years.
Shawsville UFO Encounter 1987
This incident happened to me when I was around 12 years old. My family had just moved into a house in Shawsville, in a part of Shawsville called Allegheny. If you turn down the road where the Old Meadowbrook nursing home was, it is now a library and go around 4 miles, our house was near the river on the side road. This would have been in 1987. I remember just starting school, and it was late September or early October when I was woken up to lights shining in every window of the house. We lived next to a cornfield that still had the stalks up and the grass was high. I noticed this because I opened the bedroom window, and it didn’t have a screen in it. I put my head out the window and looked up to the sky, and all I could see was this bright bright light shining in my eyes. It was so close to the house, nothing could possibly get that close to a window.
I noticed the grass was not moving, the corn stalks were not moving. Everything was dead silent, no crickets or anything. I ran into the living room then into the kitchen to see lights shining in every window. I ran back to the bedroom, and all I remember is looking up trying to see what this was. My thoughts were a helicopter, but there was no way. A helicopter would not hover next to a house, with no noise, no wind, nothing. It makes no sense to me. There was no noise, nothing was moving, and shortly after that the next thing I remember is waking up and feeling really exhausted. I remember I felt so drained that I didn’t even go to school the next day. I tried to figure this out and have no explanation.
Until I saw the Unsolved Mysteries episode that happened around the same time, I truly thought it was connected. I had seen an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that featured a story about UFOs during October of 1987 in the town of Wytheville. After watching the episode, I am convinced that I saw something that I wasn’t supposed to in 1987 connected to the other sightings. I have often wondered what it was that I saw and was reluctant to tell my story because some people would laugh about it. I am an honest person. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket. I just wanted to see what other people thought or if they had seen anything like that during that time. I have not seen anything like it since.
Tazewell and Bluewell 1987
It was mid to late October back in 1987 and I was at a skating rink in Bluewell WV on a Wednesday night when I looked up and atop the mountain something caught my eye. There was a single red light blinking on and off, no sound completely silent. It came out of the sky continuously blinking and proceeded down to the top of the mountain. It reached near the mountaintop then began to ascend up blinked one time and kind of phased out. I was also speaking to my girlfriend a few years ago when I attended the Wytheville ufo conference and I was talking with her about UFOs and my research over the years and it jogged something in her memory. She stated when she was a kid in Tazwell VA in her back yard she saw a big triangle craft go overhead completely silent. Incident this was the same time that the ufo flap in Wytheville was occurring. That shows me there are more to these sightings than just sightings she didn’t remember until I started talking about it .
Carroll County 1987
When I was a kid around the same time as the flap in Wytheville, me my mom, dad and sister were on our way home in Carroll County. My mom and dad noticed a very bright light slowly descending into the woods near us. My dad dropped us off at home, then took off after it towards NC. The next day a bunch of my dad’s co-workers told him they saw the exact same thing.
Exact Location Unknown
In the early Fall of 1987. I can not recall the exact date I was awake in the early morning and as I looked out the window I saw something in the sky that totally amazed me. This object looked kind of disc shape and had different colored lights all around it. At first it seem to be hovering in one area but I noticed the lights would seem brighter at times like it had moved closer. I could not take my eyes off of it.As it started getting daylight it disappeared. Not very long after the first sighting I seen it again but it didn’t show up as vivid and looked farther away.One night after this I was awaken by a sound over the house.It sounded like the wind was circling the house.I tried to wake my husband up but he wasn’t listening to me and fall back asleep. It reminded me of what a helicopter might sound like over my house but very close to the roof. After a few mins I was hearing a noise that reminded me of the radar sound on the old ships or submarines in old movies.I was totally in shock. After a few mins I hear a whoosh sound and it was gone. Not the noise you would hear if a helicopter was hovering but like something took off with accelerated speed. In the days that followed many people were talking about similar encounters. I will never forget 1987 and witnessing this UFO and maybe even hearing it that one night. People asked if it was frightening and I told them that it definitely was but amazing also.
