Reports of UFO sightings are buzzing through the Path Valley area where a handful of people have seen something they can't explain.
Since Saturday [March 9], people report seeing a bright disk that moves across the sky quickly, stops, and hovers over the area.
Because the object was seen more than once -- between Saturday, when it was first reported, and Wednesday night -- the chances are a lot greater that it was something natural, said Don Berliner, member of the Fund For UFO Research in Mount Ranier, MD.
But after speaking with a witness, Berliner said he might send a member of the organization out here for a look.
He's baffled. "At this point, it sounds less like something explainable than it did earlier," Berliner said.
He spoke with Dena McGarvey of McConnelsburg on the telephone Thursday. McGarvey, 28, was looking out her house window with binoculars about 7:45 p.m. Wednesday [March 13] when she saw the disc.
At first Berliner thought it was a bright planet like Jupiter or Venus.
But McGarvey says it can't be Venus. She saw Venus near the UFO. Besides, planets and stars move gradually from east to west. In 40 to 45 minutes it should have moved only a few degrees.
"It moved halfway around the sky in less than two minutes. That was not a planet," Berliner said.
So what was it?
Parts of witness reports can be explained. But put them together and it's a stumper.
"The first time I saw it, it was moving east and it was heading back (west)," McGarvey said. "It was flashing red and green lights, moving at a very fast pace toward the west."
"It all of a sudden disappeared," McGarvey said. "I kept popping my head out of my house every few minutes and about half an hour later it appeared again in the Path Valley area."
It hovered there for a half-hour to 45 minutes and stood perfectly still, flashing red, green and sometimes blue lights, she said. Through her binoculars, McGarvey could see the object -- a
>horizontal oval disc with a blackish ring around it.
"People at Path Valley saw spider-shaped legs. I'm convinced it was definitely not a plane and I know it's not a helicopter," she said.
"Nothing in the area of astronomy would behave like that -- flying around over half a complete circle," Berliner said. "That would have to be manufactured."
Art Clayton, 51, of Amberson Valley, drove to the end of town about 9:30 p.m. Saturday when a friend told him about a bright object in the sky.
He saw a large object "that looked quite a bit larger than an airplane would look at the same height," he said.
If it had been slow-moving, it could've been a satellite which moves in a straight line. Satellites take from a few minutes to 20 minutes to cross the sky, depending on their altitude.
But McGarvey said she saw the object whiz by fast -- not at a slow and steady pace.
"Parts of this are explainable, but not all of it. You can't pick and choose which bits of information to use," Berliner said. "If it moved halfway across the sky in that time, we're dealing with something very different."
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