Playa del Rey, CA - Oval

Oval light (the size of a five story building) sighted from shore had no reflection on water, no sound and traveled at breakneck speeds

Intro: I am a 59-year-old retired clothing manufacturer and designer. I am not one to claim UFO sightings at every turn. My dad, brother and I did see a meteor fly over the west side of Los Angeles back in 1962 and thought that it landed in our neighborhood but in fact it landed in Canada, according to the news report. I concluded that things in the sky are illusive, after seeing that.

The sighting: In late August of 1967 I was enjoying the warm evening with my girlfriend under a blanket on the west facing Dockweiler State Beach at Playa del Rey in Los Angeles. It was about 11:30 pm and the beach was closed to the public by this time. The beach is directly under the take off path of the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) but this night the planes were diverted to take off to the east. This is a practice reserved for windy conditions but there was no wind that night. The number of flights at the airport was down to a minimum by late night back in those days.

I had noticed a light due west from us at the horizon when we walked up to the area where we set the blanket on the sand. I figured that it might be a usually seen tanker on the way to the docks in San Pedro. We started smooching and an eerie feeling came over me, like someone was watching us but when I looked around I noticed the light on the horizon had begun to move closer to the shore at a swifter than natural speed. It was at sea level, I figured, but some things were missing. No reflective light and no sound. This made me stop and pay attention. As the object closed in toward the beach it’s size and altitude became more apparent. I sat up when the light seamed to be about a mile off the shore and could clearly see that the object was actually about 2,000 feet in the air. (I often frequented the Hawthorne airport and became accustomed to object altitude.) I ‘guestimate’ that the size and shape was oval and the volume of a five-story building.

The light emitted from the object was not painfully bright but it had a glow or halo around it as though I were looking through a frosted glass. It came directly toward me and slowed to a halt at maybe 100 feet from the shore. I slowly moved to the right over the coast line to about the area of Venice Beach (about 12 miles from our location.) This took less than a minute and then it returned in a flash. It hovered over the are where it began to browse for about two minutes.

The object then rose straight up to about 4,000 feet and quick as a click it shot off toward the southeast. I could not see it after it passed out of view beyond the sandy hill at Pacific Coast Hwy. Perhaps it traveled as far as Disneyland in Anaheim. I was not terrified but disturbed and uneasy about what I had seen.

I was trying to convince myself what had just happened when as quietly and quickly as it left it had returned to the position where it began it browsing just off the beach. It sat there for about 15 seconds and began making its way back to the horizon. At some point near the horizon it began to ascend at break-neck speed. In an instant it rose what appeared to be in an outward arch and disappeared into the night sky. The entire episode lasted less than 5 minutes but left a lifetime of excitement.

((woman's name deleted)), my girlfriend, did not experience what I saw but was equally uneasy by what she did see. I believe she saw the light as it left the area the final time. She was lying down with her face up during the episode and for some reason I felt that I had to protect her from whatever I was looking at.

We left the beach, tout suite, and never spoke of the incident to each other for fear, maybe, that we would know for sure that something was there. ((deleted)) We soon broke up (not related to that episode.)


((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD))