2003-10-18 - West Chester, OH - Chevron

Several strange aircraft, directed light my direction and retreated when spied upon with telescope..

After seeing this report I decided maybe it's not an airplane so I am filing the report now.

http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/032/S32206.html I've seen SEVERAL (more than 5) of these.. I thought as well they were too low, too silent and too large but still dismissed them as suspicious aircraft and not UFOs.. However, one week ago (10/18/03) I observed one through my telescope and it looked exactly like the drawing in the image provided in the aformentioned report. One thing eerie about the observation was how it seemed to "react" almost as if the occupants knew I was looking at it. This one was approximately 3 to 4 mi due south traveling at a constant rate of speed until I watched it. Then it became extremely bright (actually lit up me and everything around me in a diffused light similar to what you would get with a partial moon) like it was pointing a huge spot light of sorts. I could no longer observe it through the telescope due to this light and simply watched it for another 30 seconds or so with my naked eye when it "really" surprised me by reversing direction completely and abruptly, shooting away from my location to the south-south-east at a breathtaking speed especially given it's estimated distance from me. I do truly believe it's closest distance to be 2 mi from me before it reversed direction and disappeared behind the horizon.

To put in my perspective.. The craft was to my direct south, traveling west-north-west. Estimating by using some known markers (flashing tower lights) I would think the craft to be almost 3 to 4 miles to my south and moving west and towards me. With one arm extended, the craft was about the size of an eraser head and approached at probably 1" per 10 seconds. At it's closest, the craft was probably 1 to 2 miles from me to my direct south-south-west and approximately 1/2" in size. When it reversed direction abruptly I do mean abruptly it traveled at probably 3" per second. When the lights were on it appeared much larger and it truely did seem to be directed at me unless the lights were omni-directional. The craft took the same route it came, almost like (I know this sounds crazy) but it's almost like I scared it when I aimed my telescope at it.

Anyway, I did want to share this with you to simply make note of it and hopefully give some additional information. As I recall the evening was very cool and visibility was excellent with no haze and very little light pollution. I was simply taking advantage of the atmospheric conditions to look at Mars which is why my telescope was handy.

Some additional information.

When I saw the object, I changed to a 1.5x Barlow lens lens and a 20mm eyepiece - I believe that makes a 125x zoom on my scope (which I purchased shortly after my completely life-changing experience before as read in my last report a couple of months ago) When viewed through the scope, it appeared exactly (from memory) as the picture depicted and was approximately 6" wide, 1/2~1/3" high.