1981-07-15 - Fayetteville, AR - Other

As an 9 year old child I saw a dumbbell shaped object hovering in daytime at approx. 5000 feet.

The only part of this event I am not certain of is the exact time, or even the year. I was probably 8, 9, or 10 years old when it happened, unfortunately no adults were present for me to contact and ask the year, and the only other witness was even younger than I was. But the rest of it I remember with exceptional clarity. I was standing in the parking lot of George's Majestic Lounge (a live music bar) with my cousin, who is a couple of years younger than me. Our parents were inside listening to music that we had no interest in, and, as our town used to be more or less completely crime free, we were allowed to play outside, as long as we didn't wander off. It was afternoon, about 2 hours before sunset, and the moon was visible and nearly full in the day sky. For whatever reason I looked up into the sky, probably at the moon. However, while looking up I noticed in the north sky, and slightly west, was a wierd object. It was following the same path that commuter prop planes used in that era to reach our local airport (though it was flying higher than they do at that point in their approach), at first I thought it might be some kind of wierd helicopter. As I stared at it, it quickly became apparent that it didn't look like any kind of flying object I'd ever seen. The object is best described as beeing basically shaped like a dumbell. Each end, front and back, was a cube, the cubes were connected by a rectangular arm. Unlike a dumbbell, the arm did not extend passed the ends of the cubes. The object had no visible lights (it was daytime though, so I wouldn't have seen any but the brightest lights). The object was high enough in the sky that its total length appeared equal to half the diameter of the full moon. The object was uniformly grey. I have always had very good vision and was able to see a certain amount of detail; the cubes had smooth, featureless faces (at least the ones visible at my angle), but the arm appeared to be of a skeletal, framework construction. The object also emitted no sounds or trails. When I was watching it it moved considerably slower than an aircraft at a similar height. I watched, entranced, for several minutes, probably about 3 to 5. My cousin must have noticed I was staring at something because when I finally became aware that maybe I should point it out to her, I saw she was already looking at it too. I told her to get my mom, and she refused. So I told her to watch it, and I went to get my mom and dad. My parents were not eager to go outside to see "the weird flying thing in the sky", and so we didn't go out for what seemed an eternity to me, but was probably only about 5 to 10 minutes. Of course the object was gone. My counsin said it had continued along its north to south course, but had moved faster and faster until it was gone, she said it hadn't dissapeared over the horizon (all paraphrased of course), but had gone up into the sky until she couldn't see it any longer somewhere in the southwest quadrant of the sky. For years afterwards I drew pictures of the object, on school papers, on the phone notepad, in books, etc. I've never seen it since, nor have I ever heard of any sightings even remotely similar. I remember some years later, still before I was in my teens (I am now 27, in 1999), that I heard about skylab, and it's plumet to earth; at that point I just assumed that what I had seen was skylab. But now I'm pretty sure I'll never have any idea of what the object really was.