By: | Hickory Daily Record
If you’re riding along one of the main arteries through Catawba County, you just might get to catch a glimpse of your friendly extraterrestrial from a neighboring planet.
The western part of the state has been a hotbed of activity for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) recently, if you believe reports submitted to examiner.com. The website reported there was a sighting on Sunday and one on Monday in the area.
But local officials say they haven’t received any reports of anything unusual flying in the sky.
The names of those reporting the sightings are not given, either in the reports or in the story that appeared on the website.
The report on the Sunday incident said the witness was driving along Interstate 40 about 5 miles east of Statesville when they saw two jets flying in a clear, blue sky leaving condensation trails behind. The report goes on to say that a large condensation trail came down between the other two trails and then “a large shaped disk, very bright glowing and reflective” showed up. The disk, which was described as a color of white to metal, stuck around for six or eight seconds and then “retracted” back up into the sky and took the condensation trail with it.
“Approximately 30 minutes prior we witnessed two small objects in front of our vehicle flying on both sides in apporimately (sic) same level of skyline and same discription (sic) of the larger disk object, but they were much smaller,” the report said.
The report about the incident on Monday said the witness was driving along US 70 to go to lunch at Amos Howards restaurant just after 11 a.m. At first, the witness thought it was an airplane coming from Hickory Regional Airport. But the object was flying low and had no wings. The person reporting the incident described it as oblong or oval and estimated it at 100 feet long, bulging 30-40 feet in the middle.
The object was a white metal color but had a black featureless circle in the center rear.
“The craft began traveling along above the road slowly at first then all of a sudden it shrank to a black dot and then disappeared as if it shot forward at an impossible speed,” the report says.
An airport official on Tuesday said he doesn’t know of anything connected to the airport that would explain what the witness saw.
And Long View Police Detective Raymond Denton said no one reported any sort of sighting to the department. He wondered why, if it happened in broad daylight, that no one reported it to the police. Even if he was out of the office at the time, he would have heard about, Denton said with a chuckle.
Denton said the 911 emergency system would have “blown up” and he would have heard about it if something like what was described actually occurred.
But Israel Curiel, who is public relations director and a data analyst for The Mutual UFO Network of North Carolina (MUFON-NC), said he gets it when people are skeptical of those who say they’ve seen some type of UFO. He catches flack for his believing in them. And it’s catching flack or people thinking they’re crazy that has kept many from speaking out about sightings.
Curiel said a lot of the people who have reported sightings are professionals such as bankers, professors at big-name universities, pilots, engineers and police officers. The sighting on Sunday around Statesville was from an engineer coming back from a MUFON-NC meeting in Fayetteville. He said it’s rare that he talks to someone insane who is reporting an incident.
In his day job, Curiel is a business analyst for a financial institution.
Curiel said until someone sees something in the sky that defies explanation or their understanding of normal he recognizes that people think its odd.
There has been an explosion of sightings of UFOs in the state and last year had a record 6,000 reported cases, Curiel said. Previously, it was normal to get four to six reports a month. He received 30 reports in January, Curiel said. A lot of reports lately have been from the western part of the state, he said.
Curiel said UFOs can be either something that looks like a triangle-shaped craft, a traditional flying saucer or red and orange orbs about the size of a minivan or white orbs about the size of a basketball.
