UFO's in Astoria?

Very early Friday morning, while it was still night-time, I was driving east on Hwy 30 from Astoria, heading to Portland Airport with my son and daughter-in-law. It is a densely forested rural area, there are no street lights, and the sky was very black. The only lights around were my headlights. I don’t remember there being anyone else driving near us on that stretch of road at the time.

About 8 miles east of Astoria, between John Day and Svensen, I suddenly spotted an extremely bright strobing light (like from a professional camera strobe light) in the sky, which appeared to be to be on the northeast side of the road. However, there were tall pines in the way, so there was no way to tell the direction from which the light was actually coming. When my son commented, so did my daughter-in-law, and we realized that all three of us noticed it at the same time.

In about a minute, I would guess, I rounded a bend, and there was an object in the sky to the southeast, now on the other side of the road. Which means it traveled about 200-300 feet to the southeast. It was not very high in the sky at all (less than 500’), and I only saw it for a few seconds, but my impression was that of a saucer-sort of shape, with square-ish porthole-type windows with black cross-bars, like four-paned house windows.

All I could see in the windows was that the interior of the object was intensely lit, but the light did not seem to beam out from the windows. There were at least two windows, and probably three, visible. One window was larger than the others.

There was a hazy light above and around the object, and the light below it was strobing. The object did not appear to be moving, but it was hard to tell, since the car was moving. My son also had the impression that the object was not moving, but hovering.

I was so startled, I slowed down almost to a stop, but it is a very narrow and treacherous road, so it would have been very dangerous to actually stop and pull over. Plus, I did not want to take my eyes off of the object to even try it. But I still have the image of it against the black sky in my mind. My son said he saw several separate strobing lights on the bottom of the craft, where I just had the general impression of strobing lights.

My daughter-in-law kept looking out the back window after we passed by it, and said the light continued to strobe in the sky above the trees for about a minute, then suddenly stopped. I know, this sounds weird ... I mean even weirder than the sighting itself, that is ... but it seemed to me as though it had appeared just for us. A "yoo-hoo" from, well, who the hell knows.

The kids were both very unsettled by the sighting, and they both had the reaction of not wanting to tell anyone what they saw because they didn't want anyone to think they were crazy. It is a well-established fact that I am crazy, so I have no such constraints. I was amazed and delighted. Positively tickled, actually. I have always hoped I would see one someday. I’m just glad I had other witnesses with me when it happened so I don't have to look in the mirror every day, and wonder how I'll look in a white jacket with straps.

Nope, we have no pictures or audio-video clips. And I wouldn't know what to draw as I have more of an impression of an image than an actual shape that I could draw. Since he was not as distracted by and fixated on the windows as I was, my son saw the whole object more clearly than I did. I would guess we saw it for several seconds. He says he can draw it, and will send me a copy of the drawing.

We have no idea what we saw, but we all thought it was a UFO, since there just didn't seem to be any other explanation out there in the middle of nowhere. Is there another explanation? I rather doubt it, since I’ve never heard of any sort of aircraft that flies around with blindingly bright lights on inside of it.

Those distracting bright windows really made me wonder about the whole concept of “going into the light.”

Astoria Photografpix

Astoria, UFO