1998-05-28 - Stanwood, WA - Rectangle

Whatsit was circling above holding ponds and fields south of Stanwood.

I wasn't going to report this, except a neighbor in the area mentioned that her grown son had seen the same thing at the same time, and said the same thing we did: "That ain't right! What IS it?" I don't know if I'd recognize a UFO unless it landed in my yard. So, here it is.... If you look at a steel I-Beam from the end, it makes a capital I. This thing had that shape, which didn't change no matter how it turned, and it appeared to be black. The top and bottom of the I were quite thick in appearance. We thought it had to be a real quiet bi-plane style ultralight, as we see a lot of experimental aircraft flying up from the Arlington airport (some look to be little more than flying lawnmowers, to be honest, and make as much racket!). But this had No Tail and No Visible Pilot. It was a bit larger than an ultralight, and moved faster, at about the same rate a small plane would but was pretty manuverable (sp?). We could see it circling the water treatment holding ponds across from the Dairy Queen in Stanwood (in the Viking Village/Red Apple plaza). It then moved a little east over some fields and checked those out, then swung down south toward the Warm Beach area. It was still light out, but it didn't reflect any light. I'd have to say it was only 200 feet in the air. If we had been coming down the hill from East Stanwood (which is about 200 feet higher than the downtown area), we would have been able to look down on it. (We do have biplanes in the area -- saw one today doing stunts over Pioneer Highway, but like I said earlier the whatsit had no tail and the top and bottom were very thick. Too thick to be standard biplane wings.) My seven year old has much sharper eyes than I have, and she was going nuts trying to figure out what the devil it was, as it wasn't falling into any category of aircraft, powered or unpowered, that we had seen. She's seen paragliders and hang gliders and she assured me it wasn't one of those. I could make out the shape, but not the details, but she said there weren't any details for her little sharp eyes to see. My 4 year old also saw this whatsit, but she is very speech delayed so she wasn't much help. Speaking of the four year old, coming back down from Mt. Vernon today at about 2:45 pm, she let out a squawk and pointed at the sky, saying something had burst out of a cloud. I saw something streak back into the overcast, but didn't get a good enough look. I figured it was just a jet. Except within two minutes, some jets from Whidbey Island shot by in the same direction as the streak. Maybe they were just practicing. They have been flying A LOT lately over Stanwood, fairly low too. Oh, you need a little about me. I'm a 40 year old stay at home mom who wears contacts - one is a toric lense to correct astigmatism. You see why I rely on my daughter to pick up the details. I did ask her to draw a picture of what she saw, and it did verify my impression of the whatsit.