2000-10-29 - Unadilla, NE - Triangle

Powerful-sounding mystery craft hovers over farmhouse, with its vibrations knocking over objects inside.

The sighting did not come first - the sound did. I was reading late at night, my husband was in bed in the next room, and I heard the deepest, most powerful-sounding, diesel turbo type sound I'd ever heard, sounding like it was coming across our yard, and getting louder. The sound rattled the plates out of the plate grooves in the china hutch, and rattled the windows in our old farmhouse. It was loud enough to hurt our ears. Hubby was up instantly, and we both said, "What on earth is that?" We looked out the south window upward, and saw a huge dark triangle shape with rounded corners hovering about 20 feet over our roof. It had red, green and white lights, not bright, just twinkling, and about clearance-light size. Immediately, it whisked out of sight heading SW. We steeled ourselves to hear a plane crash, but heard nothing more.

The next morning, I called the Federal Aviation Authority and asked if they had any idea what it was. The man said sometimes Offutt (Air Force Base) conducts maneuvers late at night, but certainly not right atop someone's house. He checked a chart, and then said no, we were much too far south of Offutt's maneuvering perimeter. I could tell he wasn't too interested, and didn't want to pursue it more, so I thanked him and hung up. When I got home from work, I asked our nearest neighbor if he had heard anything the night before, and he said, "Yeah, did you guys start up your tractor late at night? I wondered what you were doing, but went back to sleep." Hubby and I agreed not to talk about it anymore, lest folks around home think we were weird and make jokes, like they did about the family who claimed their house was haunted.

But last week, we were visiting in a group of middle-aged to older farm folks, and found otherlocal farmers had seen or heard strange things too. Two of them reported seeing very bright, chartreuse-green spotlights that appeared to come from a helicopter or something (although there was no sound) focused from above, onto their hog or cattle lots. Then I spilled the beans about our encounter, and no one kidded us at all. You have to understand, these folks are salt-of-the-earth, practical-minded farmers, who certainly aren't prone to telling tall tales, so we all believed each other.

I'm ((deleted--50's)) years old, hold ((deleted)) jobs (family farms are in financial struggles these days,) one in business administration at a ((deleted)), NE company, and my moonlighting job in ((deleted)) at the ((philantrophic company)), as a professional ((deleted)) in their large ((deleted)) center. My husband also holds ((deleted)) jobs ((deleted)) as a farmer and the other working as a ((deleted)) We have ((deleted)) grown children and ((grandchildren)), are churchgoers, and enjoy family gatherings, concerts and sporting events as recreation.