The story reminded me of a similar experience from college.

I was travelling in a car with two friends, trying to explain all the rational explanations for various UFO sightings. We were having good laughs and a rather good discussion about the ability to jump to conclusion based on incomplete or faulty data.

We finished the conversation as we reached out destination at dusk, when we all spotted a large, tear-dropped, incandescent object rising through the trees at the end of the street. We were all quite excited... I even said, "O-ma-God... O-ma-God!" Then everyone had a good laugh when the object fully cleared the trees and was clearly a hot air balloon. It was taking off from a field a short distance away and was all lit-up by the setting sun. But, for a brief moment half-hidden by trees and all aglow in the light of dusk... it was quite an eerie sight.

(I also felt quite foolish for allowing myself to get so quickly excited, especially after just talking about skepticism and faulty perception.)

FYI - I was struck by quite another interesting sight last night. Leaving Rosslyn here in N. VA, after dark last night I saw a low flying plane coming in on final approach to National Airport. Its attitude and position in relation to me put it at a strange angle. Anyway, with its landing lights and the angle it was at it very much matched the description and drawings I've seen of so-called "flying triangle" UFOs. I mean, in the dark it appeared to be a nearly perfect triangle lit up on the corners and in the middle!

Too bad I didn't have a camera. I could be making a mint selling the photo to Fox and SciFi.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rich on 2002-11-18 14:36 ]</font>