Mendham, NJ - Disk

A saucer-shaped UFO hovered at eye-level about fifty feet away for five minutes, then took off at great speed.

I was attending boarding school run by Episcopalian (Anglican Catholic) nuns in Mendham, New Jersey. It was situated on a large, rather remote piece of property. My dorm room was on the top floor of the main building on the back side under the eaves. The building, itself, was on a hill, so that the back rooms were four floors above ground level.

It was just after lights out and I was lying in bed with the windows open. The room was tiny and the bed was about four feet from the windows, which came down to about two and a half feet above the floor. I heard a sudden very, very low thrumming noise which appeared to be right over the roof. It lasted for about three seconds and faded. I had never heard a sound quite like it and wondered what it had been. I decided to get up and have a look out the window. I kneeled down and looked out and saw a saucer-shaped object hovering at my eye level over the tennis courts about fifty feet away. UFO's were not really in my consciousness at that time, so I didn't comprehend what I was seeing at first. The craft seemed to be shaped like a round clam shell. It had approximately four or five large colored lights (or lights that changed color - white, red, green) spaced around its rim and it appeared to be revolving slowly because I could see the lights moving to the back and then reappearing around the other side. I kept asking myself what on earth this thing was and then suddenly realized with horror that it was a UFO. I was terrified. I silently begged it over and over again not to land. While I watched it, it slowly descended toward the ground. It stopped and hovered about ten feet above the ground (I couldn't hear the thrumming noise from that distance), then it rose a few feet, it tilted a little one way, then tilted a little another way, then descended again, then rose again. All of a sudden, without any prior warning movement, it took off from the hovering position at enormous speed and disappeared over the very far off horizon in about two to three seconds. It looked like a star as it disappeared. The horizon was many, many miles away (I was high up on the hill and could see a great distance).

The next morning, I went to my Physics teacher and told her what I had seen. She believed me but told me not to say anything to anyone because I would be labeled a nut, at best, and maybe thrown out of school at worst. She then confided that she and her husband had recently seen something while they were driving at night, but she dared not tell anyone for fear of losing her job and she swore me to secrecy.

My family all said I was hallucinating and I just decided that it must have been some military experimental aircraft that I would soon be seeing flying the skies. But the years went on and I didn't see it manufactured. Years later, I was sitting beside a top-level air force officer at a conference, told him what I had seen, and asked him why this experimental craft had never made it into production and use. He looked at me and said, "That wasn't a military prototype. You saw a UFO. We see them all the time. We have no idea what they are, but they are commonplace." I have to say that it was a relief to have my experience authenticated like that. Later on, I read accounts by other people who saw almost exactly what I saw and who described the same take-off speed of the craft. I have since seen several other UFO's, the most recent in January in Georgia, which I reported on this site. It was very different from the first one I saw.

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