2001-11-16 - Vicksburg, MS - Teardrop

UFO sighted by numerous people

My lady friend and I had gone to the Dollar General Store in Vicksburg, MS. She was babysitting two children, 4 yrs. old and 6 yrs. old, who were with us. My friend went into the store and I sat in my truck with the kids and waited for her. It was about 5:30 pm, and the sun was going down. The sky was very clear and still a light color but the ground was almost as dark as night. The younger child pointed into the sky and said that she saw a light in the sky, which I'm sure was the crescent moon. When I looked up to see what it was, I saw the moon, which is what I think she was looking at. Then I looked to the side of the moon a considerable distance and I saw a dark object in the sky that was shaped like a plump Hershey's Kiss, or perhaps a teardrop with a slightly flattened-out botton. It was black in a apearance with a pointed top and seemed to have an extremely faint aura around it that my friend also noticed. There were no lights on it, and it made no sound whatsoever. It was due east of us, as I was looking in the direction of the Mississippi River from the store's parking lot in the Beechwood area.

I got out of my truck partway and stared at it. It moved closer very slowly at a slight angle coming from left to right. I stood and watched it for about 3 or 4 minutes. It got about 30-50% larger as it seemed to come closer. Then it stopped moving and hovered in place. At this point it seemed to be at an altitute of between 500 and 600 ft. if my speculations of distance and size of the object were correct. I watched it for about 2 or 3 minutes, and noticed that several other people in the parking lot were also staring at it. A black couple in their late twenties spoke to me briefly about it, and I asked the man if it seemed like it was about 500 yards away, no more than 1000. He agreed that it was about that far away. My friend came out of the store and watched it with me. After another minute or two, it began to slowly move upward. I drove Sharon, the kids, and myself toward the object into the lot of a strip mall about a mile closer. I stopped and got out and we stared at the object until it became too small to see. It took about 10 minutes for the object to ascend out of sight. As it rose, it did not move to one side or another whatsoever. It just moved exactly straight upwards. I estimate the diameter of the object to have been at least 15 ft. and may possible have been 3 times that size. It was difficult to estimate it's size without knowing it's true distance from us.

It could not have been a balloon of any kind, because a balloon would have moved to one side or another (or gotten larger or smaller depending on your perspective, as it rose. There would have undoubtably been air currents somewhere between ground level and 1,000 ft. of altitude which would have caused a balloon to move sideways to some degree as it rose that far upwards. It could not have been an aircraft, such as a helicopter, because it made no sound, and helicopters make a lot of noise with their large props, and can be easily heard from a few miles away. If it were any kind of machine with a piston or turbine engine and a propeller, it would have made a lot of sound. Furthermore, law requires that all aircraft have blinking lights so that they are visible by the pilots of other aircraft, yet this object was completely black in appearance.