1976-08-18 - Sycamore, IL - Triangle

Between 1973 and 1979 I lived in Sycamore, Illinois near an elementary school. It was a newer small suburban neighborhood surrounded by corn and soybean fields. Every evening before sunset I would walk my small white dog, Fritz, around the school playground and let him off the leash. One evening before sunset during warm weather (I do not remember the month, day, or year) I had an encounter with a UFO while Fritz and I were walking up the school driveway on our way home. Three young boys on bicycles were approaching me across a grassy path to the school. They were pointing over my head and shouting loudly. I looked up and saw hovering directly over my head at about two story roof height three lights in a triangular pattern. Even though it was still daylight, I could only see the lights. I could not see a craft even though it was directly over my head. When the three boys reached me, the lights bobbed a bit, hesitated, and then rose very slowly, crossed slowly over the trees and houses, and slowly descended into a clearing three streets away where a new junior high school was under construction. The boys shouted: "It’s gone over to the junior high! Let's go!" They sped off on their bicycles and headed for the clearing. I just stood there watching the spot where the lights had descended. About the time it would have taken for the boys to have reached the spot, the lights slowly rose from the clearing, slowly traveled over the three streets and again hovered silently over my head. My dog regarded me impatiently, wondering why we did not go home, but even though he was off the leash he did not react or run away. Then I heard the boys returning, shouting "there it is!" When the boys reached me again, the lights moved, hesitated, and then flew at incredible speed toward the late afternoon sun until it quickly disappeared as a star into the sky. There had been no sound and no turbulence. Moreover, as I think back, the most amazing aspect of this experience was that I accepted it. ! I muttered, "imagine that," to myself and walked the dog home. I made no effort to talk to the boys about it, nor did they say anything to me. I forgot all about it until I went to the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." In the scene where the three small triangular light crafts fly through the toll gates of the freeway setting off the alarm, I pointed at the screen and cried out: "That's what I saw!" Then I was embarrassed,but my memory of the event had returned. I do remember seeing posted on a bulletin board at the Northern Illinois University student union a notice from a professor at a university in Chicago who was collecting reports of UFO sightings, but I made no effort to contact him, or to report my experience to anyone else.

((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD))