2002-11-01 - Traverse City, MI - Other

Very large, dark object flying very low over water, moving too smoothly and silently for airplane of any kind

At 07:20 Fri. 11/2, sitting in my car in a local parking lot, watching the snow clouds move from North to South; saw what I thought was another, darker cloud moving, but realized it had a shape, sort of like a wingless C-47 cargo plane but no sound whatsoever, and it was moving AGAINST the southbound clouds. It moved first to the north, then very smoothly--no jerkiness at all--it started toward where I was sitting (I was west of it), then again moved in another direction, heading south, and one more time to the north, then it vanished without a sound. I've lived next door to our local airport for 49 years, so I know it wasn't a plane--they're never soundless, nor do they move so smoothly, and obviously cannot change direction so quickly. I don't know if anyone saw this; there was a lot of traffic, but all work-bound toward downtown Traverse City.

This object was no more than 500 yards away from me, and very low in the sky. Traverse City is sited on Grand Traverse Bay, and it was the bay that I was facing. I got out of my car as soon as I realized this was something unusual so that I could determine whether there was any resemblance to plane engine noise; nothing but car and truck sounds, however. Size of object would have been about the size of a 777 plane, but nothing larger than a DC-10 or a very small jet can land/take off from our small airport, nor does anything fly that low over the bay (my guess would be approximately 500 hundred feet above the surface of the water, no joke)except the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, who are here each summer for a couple of days. Again, there was absolutely NO SOUND AT ALL, NONE WHATSOEVER, TOTAL QUIET as far as any plane engine, and much too smooth of moves and direction changes to have been a plane.