My Journey Into Skepticism - The Night I Saw A UFO

It was a warm August night. I was about 9 or 10 at the time, and I was sitting at a camp fire with my dad and my dad's friend Michelle.

It must have been past 10 at night, the sky was quite dark and it was a clear night.

Michelle looks to her left and she mentions that she sees 2 lights that are very close to the horizon. Much closer then any of us had seen before.

My memory gets a little fuzzy at the point, but we somehow convinced ourselves that it was not a star, or a planet, or a plane, or anything else. By definition, the lights were UFOs, and we were afraid.

I remember that my other aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbours or were around were all called over and had a look at these lights.

I myself remember looking at the lights for many hours. I remember how after looking at the lights for a while, I would notice them flicker red and white.

At first I thought it indicated that these were spacecraft and not stars, because stars don't flicker red and white.

However, I looked at the stars in the big dipper, and I started to notice that same red and white flicker

I started to look at every bright star and they all did the red and white flicker.

I then realized that the flicker must be just my imagination causing my eyes to see something that was not there.

At some point during the night, the excitement died down and everyone went to bed.

The next night, I looked for the lights we saw the night before, and they did return.

The lights were still in the eastern sky, but this time they were not so close to the horizon. They were higher up in the sky, but the relative distance between the lights never changed. It was as if the entire night sky was slightly shifted.

That was when I realized that the lights we saw were not UFOs. They had not moved relative to each other, they had only moved higher in the night sky.

It could not be a planet, as it would have moved. It could not have been a ship, unless it was a ship that never moved in 24 hours expect slightly higher in the sky.

So I decided that it was a star and not much was ever said about it again by my family.

But I can still remember back to that first night, and the feeling of my legs shaking in fear of these lights. I could feel the fear in everyone that night, and this fear was caused by nothing more then 2 stars a little low on the horizon.