MY CLOSE ENCOUNTER with the BLACK TRIANGLE UFO

Since early in the 1980s there have been hundreds of sightings of huge triangular-shaped UFOs around the world. Their size, shape, and flight characteristics do not match any known conventional or experimental aircraft. I'm one of the lucky few who have seen one.

 The following is a true and accurate account of my “close encounter” in Seattle, Washington in 1993. I believe it was in the month of November. It was a Sunday night about 9:30. I often had occasion to be driving north about that time of evening on Sundays and I usually took the I-5 freeway.

This time, however, I knew the freeway, northbound, was jammed up due to an accident. So I took an alternate route which eventually led me to what I think was East Marginal Way, right next to the main Boeing Aircraft facility in Seattle.

As I was traveling, northbound, I noticed three red lights low in the sky ahead of me and to my right. They were moving in unison, very slowly across my field of vision from east to west. At first I thought they must be the lights of a low flying plane, perhaps about to land. Then I thought, no, they must be helicopters because a plane, even if it was landing, wouldn't be moving that slowly. The trouble was, I couldn't actually see the craft or crafts that the lights were attached to. They were, maybe, a half mile ahead of me, about 30 degrees to my right.

Normally, I wouldn't have paid much attention to this because I'd been making that Sunday night drive past Boeing (although via the freeway) for twelve years. This is also not too far from the Sea-Tac Airport. In all that time I'd seen plenty of airplanes and helicopters flying low in this area. But something was different this time. It took me a minute to realize what it was.

It was the fact that the lights weren't blinking. I thought that was odd. It seemed to me every airplane or helicopter I've ever seen flying at night had blinking lights. I squinted my eyes as I drove toward the lights, trying to see just what I was actually looking at. Although I was now only about two blocks away from being directly under the flight path of these lights, I still could not make out what they were attached to. However, from their slow, steady movement, in unison, I was pretty sure all three of them were attached to a single object rather than being independent of each other.

By the time I was directly in line with their flight path, they were about to enter the airspace above Boeing Field to my immediate left. At this point I was convinced it was a single, low-flying craft of some kind and I knew there was something very odd here.

I pulled my car off to the side of the road and rolled down the window to get a better look. But the craft was now directly overhead so I had to get out of the car to see it. I opened the car door and stepped out. Craning my neck to see the craft as it passed slowly directly over my head at an estimated altitude of less than 500 feet (Note: at the actual time of the sighting my impression was that the craft was perhaps only about 150 feet above me) I could see it was a gigantic black triangle.

There is no other way to describe it because that's precisely what it was; a huge, black, triangle; not just "sort of" triangular shaped, like one of those stealth jets I'd seen photos of. It was just one big, three-sided, cookie-cutter-straight-edged, black, geometric shape; a triangle with one large, round unblinking red light at each of its three corners, flat up against the underside of the craft.

There was a high, gray cloud cover that evening, subtly lit by the Seattle city lights in the distance. I could clearly and unobstructedly see the object like a huge, dense black silhouette against this gray ceiling. I stood there almost not believing what I knew I was seeing. I actually said to myself, “Ok. What, exactly, are you seeing? You're going to want to remember every detail of this! Just the facts, now. What, exactly, do you see?” I made a mental inventory:

• Black triangle.
• Red light on each corner, flat up against the underside of the craft.
• They don't blink. (Note: at this point it has proceeded on past me and was now over Boeing field)
• It looks like it's about seventy-five to a hundred feet above one of the main Boeing hangars.
• It's moving very slowly. Maybe five miles per hour.
• It's heading west.
• It appears to be about the size of a football field.”

Suddenly I realized, as I stood there in the dark on this quiet empty street, the object didn't make a sound! Maybe more than anything else, that's what made the whole thing so eerie. Something that huge, that close, moving through the air at a snail's pace should be making some kind of a sound. A hum. A rumble. Anything. But, no. It just moved across the sky like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie with the volume turned off.

I looked up and down the street to see if anyone else was witnessing this silent event, but the street was dark and empty in both directions. It occurred to me, however, that the thing had just passed directly over hundreds of cars on the freeway which was only a few miles east of where I was standing.

I looked up again at the mysterious craft now blending into the dark horizon. I watched it until I couldn't see it anymore and then it was over. I got back into my car and closed the door. The window was still open and I took another look. Nothing was there but the gray night sky, softly aglow from the distant city lights. It was as if nothing had happened. But believe me, it did, indeed, happen.

••• Addendum: The weekend following my sighting, I told my ex-wife about it. We're on good terms and I was either picking up my son for a weekend visit or returning him. I can't recall which. In any case, her response to what I told her was rather shocking but it may be significant to note that she has no interest in the UFO phenomenon and is not prone to making up such stories "off the cuff".

She was working as a cocktail waitress and often had conversations with many people during the course of her work. She told me that one of her customers, a Boeing employee, told her that there was an underground manufacturing facility located somewhere on the Boeing property where they were building a huge, triangular craft. Supposedly this was a "secret" underground facility that no one was really supposed to know about.

I asked her what else he told her but, having no real interest in such things and being very busy that evening, she didn't bother to ask any questions or in any way follow up on the conversation. As I recall, she didn't know who this fellow was as he was apparently not one of the "regulars".

I don't know if his story has any merit or not but I did find it very curious, especially coming from her, and especially since I did see the craft cruise slowly, directly over the Boeing manufacturing plant.

Also of interest is the fact that Boeing made big news in 2002 when a story hit the press that they were experimenting with anti-gravity propulsion. Later, however, they denied it. I recall, however, that some researcher (I think it may have been Bill Hamilton) claimed he'd actually seen a 45-page document from Boeing pertaining to the anti-gravity research.

It occurred to me at the time of the sighting that the craft seemed much too big to be able to cruise that slowly without just falling to the ground. In fact it's more accurately descriptive to say it was "floating" rather than flying.

In any case, as stated previously, my ex-wife not only has no interest in such matters, she's also not one to come up with such imaginative tales on the spur of the moment. She was quite serious when she related this incident to me.

So just what did I see? Was it an alien craft? A secret military craft? I don't know. We'll just have to file it into the "Gray Basket" as UFO researcher, Stanton Friedman, is fond of saying.

Additional note of interest: My affidavit attesting to the details of my sighting accompanied about 30 others which were offered into evidence in attorney Peter Gersten's lawsuit against the U. S. Department of Defense in the 1990s. It was an FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) suit attempting to acquire any documents the DoD might have in their files related to this particular type of UFO. Gersten presented a favorable argument and the judge ordered the DoD to search for and present any such documents. Of course the DoD claimed they had nothing and eventually the judge went along with the government on this one. Gersten was instrumental in forcing the government to release hundreds of UFO documents in the late 1970s/early 1980s - files the NSA and FBI previously claimed didn't exist.