2006-11-23 - Bellchester, MN - Unknown

Streaking orange light made no sound at all.

My family was on its way home from Lake City when we decided to stop at my wife’s brother’s house in Bellchester to say "hi," since he didn’t show for the family Thanksgiving.

His house was dark and my wife decided to go herself to see if he was home while I waited in our minivan with our two young kids who are still in car seats. My oldest was sleeping and we didn’t want to wake her up.

I had shut off the headlights and was trying to figure out how to dim the radio lights when out of my peripheral vision, I saw what I thought was an airplane streak from my front left to front right, almost above my vehicle. This craft was flying very quickly at cloud level and could be seen in between two puffs of clouds on a partly cloudy night.

I had only briefly locked into the object when it entered into another big cloud and that was all I saw. This happened very quickly, a second or two.

At first it didn’t register as anything unusual since my immediate focus was elsewhere. Since my wife was talking with her brother, I was able to think about what I had seen. I’d spent my first three years in the Army at Fort Bragg, next to Pope AFB, where a lot of F-16s, A-10s, and cargo planes such as the C-5 and then the new C-17 flew. I had spent some time at Seymour Johnson AFB guarding cargo next to its runway and had intimate understanding how loud F-15s were. When I was a kid growing up in Southern Wisconsin, C-130s flew over our house nap of the earth and so I knew how loud they were, what sound they made, and how much slower they were than fighter jets. I spent a lot of time in C-130s and C-141s at Bragg as well.

What I realized was that at that low of an altitude and at that speed, the only thing it could have been was a fighter jet hauling butt. However, I know that fighter jets are not allowed to fly so low at those speeds over populated areas. It was much too fast to be a C-130 or similar type of aircraft.

But the most distinctive fact that struck me, was that when this object flew over, it made no sound. Even in a minivan with engine running, the sound of a fighter jet going that fast that low would have been deafening. I would have just heard it approach before seeing it, and heard it even longer after it passed over. Instead, nothing at all. No sound.

I then realized that I might have seen a UFO. I couldn’t have been sure in the moment, but after analyzing all the facts, it couldn’t have been any known aircraft. It wasn’t a satellite because they don’t fly under the clouds. I thought it might have been a meteor, but this flew at a straight horizontal path. I’m no meteor expert, but the ones I’d seen always came at some angle to the horizon, are usually higher up in the sky, and appear whitish, not the orange light I’d seen. If it were that close, wouldn’t I have heard something?

FYI, I spent 13 total years in the Army, about half on active and half in the Guard. I started as ranger qualified paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne (11B) and finished as a Signal Corps officer within V Corps with one tour in Iraq. I was with the 32nd Infantry BDE WIARNG between those two Active Duty stints. I am currently a small business owner in a small MN town and only talk about my UFO sightings with people I trust or if someone else admits they saw one, too.

I saw my first UFO sighting as a young teen and posted that experience in the WI area. I grew up in a fundamental Christian home, so this is not something I'm suppose to believe in. However, I can't deny and can't explain what I've seen.