Charlotte, North Carolina (12-1977)
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
Witness Testimonial
I saw a neon-rimmed UFO on December 1977 when I was living in Charlotte, NC. I was laying in bed one evening in my darkened room. The window curtains were parted and the night sky was clear. Around 9PM my eyes caught a glimpse of a lighted object traveling at a distance above the trees of my backyard. It looked strange and I took notice of it. When the object cleared the trees I saw what appeared to be a circular disc about the size of a golf ball. The object's rim was lit with a band of white light similar to a neon light. This light was uniform and steady without any blinking or strobing. In the center of the object was a point of white light. The object glided overhead at a deliberate speed traveling due north. It made no perceivable sound. I carefully watch the object for about 10 seconds until it flew over some nearby woods.
Excitedly I got dressed and ran outside, but the object wasn't visible because of the tall trees. I had to run about two blocks to a large street before I could get a clear view of the sky. Looking north I spotted the object. It had traveled a good distance in the minute it had taken me to get dressed and run to the street. The object now looked like a horizontal white line. Its size was slightly larger than the width of the moon and it was receding into the distance. I could see two points of white light -- one above and another below the rim light. (I had seen only the bottom point light previously.) Both point lights were centrally placed, the space between them being about 1/4 of the rim's width.
I watched the object for another two minutes as it flew off into the far horizon and finally disappeared. The object always maintained a straight flight, its rim never tilting away from horizontal. As the object flew away I compared it with two aircraft that were visible in other areas of the sky. Both appeared to be commercial airliners with familiar blinking and colored lights. While I could easily identify these airplanes, the unknown object looked like nothing I'd ever seen. However, despite its strange appearance, the object seemed rather banal and non-threatening. I had a vague feeling that it was built by humans and was being flown for mundane reasons. That was my impression of the craft at the time.
Credits
Special thanks to MUFON.
