1977-02-15 - Joyce Kilmer Slickrock Creek Wilderness, NC - Circle

very large craft, moving at the speed of light, no sound, lots of lights, jet aircraft came to invesitgate.

While camping in a remote area of western NC under crystal clear skies in mid February, my friends and I noticed a light moving erraticly in the heavens at what appeared to be great altitude. This light was 'brighter' than and 'larger' than the stars and moved in a stop and go fashion under no normal flight plan operation. The light seemd to cris cross the sky at great rates of speed and then began to descend closer to our location.

We were surrounded by mountains in a secluded valley and the light went down behind a large ridge in the heart of the wilderness area and a glow appeared from behind the ridge and began to move from one end of the valley to the other. As we sat mesmerized, all of a sudden this very large craft making no sound rose up from the valley floor and was almost as large as the ridge itself.

The light we had seen earlier in the sky was apparent that it was the underside of the craft and the craft was circled by many flashing and mulit colored lights. We could 'feel' someone was inside and knew that we were there. This behemoth craft lingered for a moment and then shot skyward with no sound and moved as fast as one can think. Faster than our eyes could follow and all of this with absolutely no sound but a strange sort of vibration in our stomachs.

We stood there in awe for a few seconds and then began to hear the rumble of something coming our way into our little secluded valley in the middle of a wilderness area. All of a sudden several jets appeared deep in the valley and directly over our camp so low we could see the lights on the wings quite clearly. We counted several jets but in rality this may have been only a couple making passes over our location. It was if the jets came to investigate what the larg craft was and I must tell you that there was absolutely no comparison in the kind of propulsions between the craft and the jets.

The craft was in space again and we could see the same light moving somewhat erracticly and then was gone. The odd part of the story is that I had built a large fire and we noticed that it was burned down to ashes. The really odd part of the story is that we were supposed to continue backapcking for several more days and we simply left the next day never speaking of the incident in 4 hour drive home or for that matter remembering it.

A few months later at an outside evening event several people were talking about UFO`s and suddenly my friend just burst out crying and yelling at everyone that they didnt know what they were talking about and that only he and myself and our third friend knew what was going on. It was at that moment that we all three had a sort of collective memory and began to relate to each other what took place that night and even remmbering not speaking about it until then.

This event has caused great stress to all three of us for the past 25 years and is accomapnied by strange dreams and I have tried to report this to several investigators through the years only to get no response. I should think that if Federal jet aircarft left the ground that night in the deep south, probably from north Georgia, that somewhere there is a flight record of that event. I just want to know if you can help. It should be added that my friend and I are sort of aviation buffs and I can tell you that after many airshows and a wife in the air force that this craft was like nothing that we have available to us.

Also at the risk of ridicule, a few months later the movie 'Close Encounters' came out and we were all completely stunned at how close the final scene was to what we experienced that night. I just cant explain how large this thing was. Thank you.