UFO Over Duck, WV
We determined that it was harmless... so Pete went back to his hay making.
by Mack Samples (Originally published in Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine, August 2016)
It was on June 13, 2016. It was an absolutely beautiful day with a deep blue sky. I was on my tractor about 10:00 a.m. when my neighbor Pete Nichols came by to pick up his hay kicker which he had been using the day before as he harvested some of my hay. I got off my tractor to visit with him for a moment.
Pete was telling me a tale about shooting a grouse one time and was describing how it fluttered upward like a helicopter. He was demonstrating with his hands and looking upward. All of a sudden he stopped and said, "What the (expletive) is that."
It took me a moment to locate the object that he was viewing but then I saw it also. It was very round and very high in the sky. To the naked eye, it looked to be about the size of a silver dollar. As we watched it for a few minutes we noticed it was not moving in any specific direction. It was just sitting there. The sun was reflecting off it making it very bright. It looked to be a metallic object.
We watched it for a few more minutes and decided that it was moving some, but not in the same direction. We were about a hundred yards from my house so I scurried to the bedroom to get my binoculars. When I got back to where I had left Pete standing, the object had not moved. In a moment or two, we got the glasses on it and could see that it was much larger than we thought.
As I said earlier, it appeared to be very high, every bit as high as a passing jet as it cruised by a little farther north. We watched it for several minutes, determined that it was harmless and not a terrorist device, so Pete went back to his hay-making across the hill.
I wanted to make sure that we were both not seeing things so I went to the house again, found Thelma ironing clothes in the basement, and brought her outside. I was sure the object would be gone when we got back to where Pete and I had been standing. But, it was still there. It had not traveled very far from where we first saw it.
Thelma soon had it in the glasses.
She said she thought it looked like a triangle, but to me, it still looked round. We observed it until our necks got tired. It still did not move. So I concluded that we were under observation. It still appeared harmless, and did not try to beam us up or fire any lasers in our direction. So we went back to our chores.
I mowed for perhaps another half hour and got off the tractor to see if the object was still there. It was not.
I did not call the police or the news media because I knew they would not believe me anyway. I didn't call the Obama Administration because I did not want any federal authorities lurking around in my holler.
You notice I did not call it an “alien spacecraft.” But I considered three things before I named it. First, I was not able to identify what it was. Second, it had to fly to get where it was. And third, it was an object of some kind. So I called it a UFO.
