On the night of November 19, 2011 at about 10:30 pm, I was in my house in Stafford, VA. I was by myself at the time. The weather was clear. I walked over to close my back door and noticed through my sliding door a very bright object in the sky, toward the east. The angle of elevation from my viewpoint was probably about 45 degrees. The big lights were white, but it also had a few blinking red lights, not the normal red and green lights you would see on the wings of a commercial airplane. I am accustomed to seeing planes in the night sky as we are on a path toward the DC airports. This was much lower than the planes normally fly and was traveling roughly north to south rather than the normal south to north-flying planes we are accustomed to seeing at night heading toward the airports. My first thought was that it must be a helicopter with searchlights and I wondered for whom or what they might be searching. There was another plane in the area when I noticed the object, but it was much higher and appeared to be just a plane on its normal route toward the airport.
As I continued to watch it, the object moved very slowly in a southerly direction. I noticed that the extremely bright lights were not aimed at the ground as if it were a search helicopter. It moved behind the trees in back of my house. I thought it was strange, but figured I�d seen the last of it so I went and sat down. From my chair where I was watching TV I can see that same section of the sky. Maybe 5 or 10 minutes later, I saw what I assume was the same object traveling back this way, south to north. As it got closer, it slowly turned and moved toward my house, just over the power lines. When it turned toward me I could see that it was very large and had 3 huge, round white lights spaced widely and evenly across the front. I could see for certain by now that it was not a helicopter. Plus, we see and hear plenty of helicopters here due to our proximity to the Quantico Marine Corps Base and other military installations. I am very familiar with the loud sound of a helicopter going by. As it approached, I began to hear that it was only making a low sound.
I walked out onto my back porch and watched as it got closer and closer. It appeared to be getting lower toward the ground. For some reason, I wasn�t afraid that it was going to crash, I assume because I could tell how slowly it was moving and it seemed to be under control. It was simply mesmerizing and I was transfixed watching it. I was frustrated that I was home alone and couldn�t yell for someone to come see what I was seeing. As I watched with my jaw dropped, it glided by very slowly and rather quietly, but not silently, almost overhead. From my porch, it appeared to pass about 30-50 feet to the south of me. I would compare the sound and movement to a boat with a trolling motor, only flying, or the sound somewhat like a lawnmower in the distance. It certainly wasn�t the sound of a normal plane engine, which would have been rather deafening at that close range. I am not familiar with a plane that can fly that quietly and slowly or with the configuration of the 3 huge lights.
As it passed by, the intensity of the lights was no longer interfering with my view of the object. I was looking at it from underneath so I could make out the shape, probably aided by the small streetlight that is almost below where it passed. It was dark and appeared to be somewhat of a boomerang shape. There were no lights on the underneath side. If I were to compare it to a full moon, I�d estimate that from side to side it would be larger than 10 or 12 moons. It�s difficult to say at night, but I�d guess it was about 200 feet above the ground. From the time it first came into view from underneath until it went over the trees was about 10 seconds. I could still see it through the small stand of trees beside my house, but I didn�t have an unobstructed view any more. It was like standing on the runway if a 747 could glide quietly in for a landing, except it wasn�t shaped like a commercial airplane. It was quite large.
It continued gliding across the road in front of my house, and across the field as it curved toward the south and disappeared beyond the trees. I continued to watch for a while, then went inside to find a camera in case it came back. My husband had taken our camera on a trip, our video camera’s battery was dead (probably not caused by the object), and our old film camera also had a dead 6-volt battery, for which I had no replacement. I plugged in the battery for the video camera just in case, but never got a picture. I turned on the radio to see if anyone called in a report, but didn’t hear any news.
A little while later, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, one of my sons came home and I told him what I had seen. Within about another 20 minutes, I saw bright lights again traveling from north to south, similar to where I had seen them the first time. At this point, my son looked out and saw the object and commented on how bright and low it was. He watched until it disappeared behind the trees in our yard. Typical of his not wanting to appear too excited and since he hadn�t witnessed what I had seen before, he went back into the kitchen, but I walked out behind my house so I could see behind the trees and watched as it moved south. It never disappeared from sight, but eventually I determined that it was moving closer again and a little higher in the sky. Oddly, the appearance of the lights didn�t change like it had turned around � more like it was backing up. The bright lights were no longer visible. It came back the way it went, behind my house, higher this time and moving more quickly, but with no white lights on the front, just the red flashing lights on the body. I watched as it flew north and out of sight. That was the last I saw of it.
There are several rows of high-tension power lines behind my house, running somewhat north and south. It was over these at some points, but didn�t necessarily follow the lines, especially when it headed south � the lines run a little more south-west and it traveled a little more south-east. And, of course, when it turned and came toward me and continued in a slow circle to the south it wasn�t over the lines. Other than my son, who just got a brief look at the object when it was more in the distance, I�m not aware of any other witnesses, although I don�t know how anyone out at that time could have missed it if it passed near them as low and slow as it was here.
This is the second time I have seen something unusual behind my house. The first time was a night almost two years ago and involved something large with only red lights, some blinking and some steady, descending into view through my back door then quickly flipping one end downward and rapidly descending out of sight behind the small hill in my back yard, at about a 45 � 50 degree angle, into the trees or the creek. That whole incident lasted only maybe 5 or 10 seconds. My first thought was that a plane had caught a wing on the power line and gone down. My husband and I ran outside but never saw anything more. From where he was sitting, he didn�t see the lights but followed me out based on my reaction of shock. As I thought about it, I realized it didn�t have any white lights like a plane or helicopter would normally have at night and there was no loud noise as a plane or helicopter would have made at that distance.
I�ve lived in this house for 24 years and have seen plenty of planes and helicopters out the back door and windows, as that is where my den is and my chair faces toward that direction. These two incidents were definitely unusual. I know what they weren�t � weather balloons, swamp gas, ball lightning� but I�d certainly like to know what they were. If the large object that nearly flew over my house is military and it�s ours, then good for us. I don�t know why they would test fly it low over a housing development in Northern Virginia, though. Very puzzling. I can�t say that what I saw was an extra-terrestrial UFO, but it was F. and it was an O. and it was definitely U. to me. If someone can give me a plausible explanation that would be great because no one with whom I�ve spoken has been able to come up with one.
This is the statement from my son:
On the night of November 19, 2011 I came home around 11:00 pm and saw my Mom standing on the back deck looking up into the sky. She explained to me that she had just been watching a large aircraft that had been slowly moving through the sky at a low altitude, with a strange light pattern that didn�t resemble an airplane. Because we live near Quantico, I said it could have been one of their planes and went inside. About 20 minutes later, she said she saw it outside again so we walked out onto the back porch and saw a much brighter than normal aircraft flying just over the tree line, heading south. It was moving slower than the airplanes that we frequently see. The lights on it didn�t resemble the lights on a normal airplane. It had extremely large front white lights that didn�t shoot a beam forward like headlights, but lit up a large area around the front of the aircraft. It seemed to be very large, bigger than a regular jet airplane, which we often see flying behind our house.
The aircraft continued along the tree line from our vantage point until I could no longer see it through the trees from the porch. I thought it was gone, so I walked back into the house, but my Mom walked back up onto the hill to see if she could get a better look at it. I have seen airplanes fly over the house my entire life since we are on one of the flight paths for Washington airports and we live near Quantico. This didn�t resemble any passenger jet or any other aircraft I�ve seen over the years. When passenger jets, helicopters and military aircraft fly over, they make a clearly audible sound. During the time I observed the aircraft, I didn�t hear any sound coming from it. I�m curious to know what it was.
