2001-02-11 - Gulf Breeze, FL - Oval

I was driving home I pullued into my driveway when I noticed several bright lights at tree top level.I thought it was someone shooting off a roman candle off the dock in the back yard. I thought this was strange because it was not holiday, fireworks are illegal in this area. None-the-less, people do shoot off fireworks sometimes but I had only see people shooting them off on New Years and Forth of July so I was curious what was going on in my back yard. My house is on the bay and I got out of my truck and went around the house to the back yard and walked out on my dock to see what was going on. The dock is pretty long and extends about 300 feet into the bay. When I got to the end, I didn't see anyone and and started walking back to shore and to my house. I was looking up in the air for the source of the lights I had seen earlier and at the exact second my I was looking in its direction, bright color lights came on. The object was just above tree level and very close. It was not moving and I am positive it was reacting with me. Several different color lights flashed on in sequence in a horizontial band around what I could best describe as an oval shape. I was well aware of the hundreds of reports in this area from the late 1980s but generally thought they were fakes. At that split second, I questioned my belief and quite frankly got a little scared. The object was between me an land and I wasn't sure what to do. It was dark and after the light display, I think my eyes dialated because I lost some of my night vision and I didn't see anything else in the sky. I paused for a moment and walked, with a little fear, back to my house and went into the back door of my house. I never told anyone but my wife about it. Some of the things that were striking about it was that it was so close, it was a relatively small object (maybe two automobiles in size), it was low, just above the trees, perfectly quiet and what was most rememerable was the crisp, clear color lights. They were very bright! but wha t I most recall was thinking how clear and pure the color looked. I am an engineer, a general skeptic (read The Skeptical Inquirer regularly), professional and well known in the community. People around here don't talk much about UFOs because of the bad publicity we received in the late 80s and early 90s and I worry about my professional reputation by telling people. I can say for certain this was no airplane, helicopter, firework, ballon, star, swamp gas or anything else my rational trained mind can explain. It is by all accounts an unidentified flying object. The funny thing is that although that was the closes I have been to an unidentified object, over the years that I have lived in the Gulf Breeze area, I have seen many unexplained objects hovering around here.

((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous. PD))

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