Tag Archives: ufo sighting

Memorate: My Grandpa’s UFO Sighting

Context:

Informant J is a 73 year old Mexican-American man and is the collector’s grandfather. He is from San Jose, California, but his family moved there from parts of Texas and Mexico. For the majority of his life, J was a manager at a regional grocery store, and studied art in college with a focus in jewelry making. J is now retired and his hobbies include guitar playing, metal working, and reworking vintage cars.

Text:

(Please excuse typos, this is an unaltered text message from the informant): “I was fifteen years old and had just finished watching Superman on my grandfather’s television (he had one of the only color television on the block so I would frequent his house regularly). I lived caddy corner from them across the street so it only took a minute to get home. Upon reaching my house I stopped at my father’s 1959 surf green four door Oldsmobile which was parked in our driveway. It had a huge trunk like most cars of that era and I layer back on the trunk as was a regular occurrence. I was laying back on the trunk looking up at the stars when I saw a  pattern of five or six lights moving across the sky moving at a very fast rate of speed in a tight pattern. I was extremely frightened when the pattern of lights stopped for a few seconds and then split in different directions. I could not sleep with the lights off for at least a week and i was very reluctant to lay on that trunk to look up at the sky after that experience.”

Interpretation:

This was a story my grandpa had previously told me, and I asked him to write it out for this assignment. He claims that this was his own personal UFO sighting, and is the reason he believes in aliens now. It’s an interesting memorate, however, because he distinctly remembers watching Superman right before it happened. To me, that reads as inspiration for the story, something that may have convinced his brain that the stars moving in the sky were someone or something supernatural was moving, rather than a shooting star or a plane. My grandpa seemingly wanted to believe that whatever was in the sky was a UFO. It’s important to note, too, that this memorate made him reluctant to look up at the sky again for fear of seeing what he was convinced were aliens of some sort, and that he associated lying in the truck bed with that experience. I also wanted to mention that my grandpa specifically included details like the car’s make and color; it makes me think that those smaller bits of the story are what helps him to remember it.

Memorate: My Great-Grandparents’ UFO Sighting

Context:

Informant J is a 73 year old Mexican-American man and is the collector’s grandfather. He is from San Jose, California, but his family moved there from parts of Texas and Mexico. For the majority of his life, J was a manager at a regional grocery store, and studied art in college with a focus in jewelry making. J is now retired and his hobbies include guitar playing, metal working, and reworking vintage cars.

Text:

(Please excuse typos, this is an unaltered text message from the informant): “There was an incident that happened when my parents were traveling to Del Rio Texas. They were in the middle of the desert headed for DR when they noticed a bright light shining behind their car they thought it was another car coming up behind them with their high beams on or maybe a bright light from a train. My dad as afraid to pull over for fear that it might be something nefarious. Needless to say they traveled 20 miles or so and they still had the light shining on their car. After traveling a bit farther the light shifted to above the car and  suddenly the light disappeared and everything was dark again. My mom said that she was pregnant with me and they were freaked out about what had occurred. There were a large number of ufo sightings in that area during that period of time. No one could explain what had occurred!”

Interpretation:

My grandpa mentions that this happened to his parents when there were common UFO sightings in the area at the time. Based on what I know about my family, this happened either in 1949 or 1950, right before my grandpa was born. I find it interesting that a bright light alone was enough to convince my great grandparents that a UFO may have been traveling alongside them. This memorate doesn’t involve contact with any actual ‘alien’ creatures or strange technology – just a bright light – but the popularity of alleged UFO sightings in the late 40s and early 50s is definitely at play here. My family members were probably more likely to believe that what they saw was a UFO or alien spaceship because that was a common occurrence in the community around them. A quick google search provides many results for Texas alien sightings in those years. Although this memorate doesn’t reference a specific legend or named figure, aliens in general function similarly to legends – in that there is a negotiation of belief surrounding them and peoples’ ideas about them are influenced by their peers. It’s also notable my grandpa was told this happened while his mother was pregnant with him – he is a staunch believer in the supernatural, as was his mother.

UFO Over Bridge Sighting

Text 

“Alright, uh, so this was my middle school teacher in 7th grade, whatever, who was an English teacher. Um, and he was like an old man who would just tell random stories about his life. This one time, him and his girlfriend at the time were like, hanging out, I guess, just in- they were on like a bridge in a city on a date, you know, like a romantic date, looking at the stars on the bridge. 

They’re hanging out on this bridge, they’re sitting, they’re chatting, um, and they see in the sky this moving, like, thing. It looked sort of like- well, it looked like a spaceship, is what they said. It had- it was like, some kind of thing in the sky and had like, lights underneath it, and it was moving in sort of like a figure eight pattern in the sky, just like right above the bridge, uh, above the city. And they both saw it for a while, and they were watching it, and eventually it left. Um, and he- I remember my teacher followed the story up with like ‘kids these days- you guys wouldn’t have seen it because you would be on your cell phones!’” 

Context

C is a University of Southern California student who went to middle school in Mercer Island, Washington in the United States. While unsure exactly when his teacher experienced these events, C guessed it happened about twenty to thirty years ago. He also guesses that his teacher has told this story to other classes of students. When asked about his and his classmates’ reactions, C said their reaction was skeptical but interested and polite.

He then followed up with an explanation of his teacher’s own stance on aliens: “Um, I don’t think he thinks it was aliens, necessarily? I think he believes- or, he told us he thinks it was a stealth plane, because they had like government stealth planes, and apparently he looked up what government stealth planes are like nowadays…and it apparently looked pretty similar to a stealth plane, so he thinks maybe it was that. Because it was kind of like black and V-shaped, I guess.” To explain the final part of his retelling, C also added that his teacher was very anti-cellphones.

Analysis

Folklorists have discussed how alien beliefs are often indicative of the US’s societal predispositions towards the future, upwards direction, and technology, and this memorate has several elements that seem to support this notion. C’s teacher’s explanations for the ‘true’ identity of the UFO as a stealth plane seems to indicate an air of mystery, intrigue, and perhaps even fear surrounding unknown government practices and technology. In addition, the way that C’s teacher ended the story with a jab at the cellphone usage of today’s children showcases the fluidity of narratives and how the meaning behind a narrative comes from one’s mind. While C and his classmates see the memorate as an entertaining (if unlikely) legend, C’s teacher, with his anti-cellphone moral message and skepticism towards the truth of the event, seems to have refashioned his experience to somewhat resemble a tale.

UFO Over Highway

Text

C: “Okay, so, this happened, like, ten something years before I was born. Or maybe like five something years? My mom and dad were driving down the highway. I don’t know which highway– it was a specific highway though, they told me the name of the highway. And they were driving down the highway, and suddenly my mom sees these lights in the sky, so they pull over and there’s these like, mysterious lights. And it’s not just like a one-off flash. It’s these, like, moving patterns of glowing lights in the night sky. And my mom and dad are both looking at it, and other people have also pulled over, like, on the side of the highway to observe these lights.

Me: Oh my god! So it’s not just them.

C: Yeah, it’s not just them! And then the next day they read about it in the newspaper. Uh, so they definitely saw these moving lights, and they think it was like- they don’t know what it was because it was like- it couldn’t have been mistaken for a plane or something. It was like these moving patterns of lights in the sky.”

Context

 C is a University of Southern California student from Mercer Island, Washington in the United States; his parents had this experience sometime in the 1990s (and pre-cellphones) while on their way to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He stated that his parents told him this story when he was around fourteen or fifteen, but clarified that it was due to his parents having many stories to tell, rather than because of any concern about his age or readiness to hear the story. When asked about his and his parents’ belief in aliens, he stated: “My mom thinks it was, like, she doesn’t know what it was, but my dad is more of a skeptic. He thinks it was definitely just like a plane or a weather balloon or something. My mom does not know what it was.” 

C mentioned that he will tell this story to people if the topic of UFOs comes up in conversation, but not “out of nowhere.” When asked about his own beliefs in aliens, C stated the following: “I mean, sometimes I think people will have UFO stories and you sort of have to be polite about it. Um, I don’t- I don’t think aliens are real, but I did think it was like, pretty interesting. But I believe that they saw whatever they thought they saw.” He also stated that he looked for the newspaper article on the event that his parents claimed existed but was unable to find it. 

Analysis 

This memorate showcases the variety of attitudes and beliefs in the United States about aliens and the desire US society has to both prove and disprove legends. The number of other people present, the persistence of the lights, and the newspaper article allegedly written about the UFO sighting are likely mentioned to add credibility to the tale by indicating a larger network of rational peer witnesses. However, C also mentions his and his father’s explicit skepticism and his mother’s uncertainty about what actually happened, keeping the event’s supernatural element up for debate and allowing the respectful persistence of multiple perspectives within the same family. C’s mention of telling others this legend when discussing UFOs also indicates the memorate’s personal value to him as a means of connecting with others over strange yet possibly shared experiences.

UFO Navy

Nationality: USA
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: English

So, my teacher is the like tech guy at school, and told me about a time when he was in the navy and they were on their battleship and they saw some weird, like…light, and it came down above the ship and stopped, like a big ball of light. And it like stopped over the ship and went around a little bit, and then it disappeared. Um…and so he talked about that a lot. And he and the whole boat saw it. 

We were hiking, and just like telling stories while we were walking and he brought that up. He definitely seemed to think it was a UFO…um…or something like that. I have heard that theres a similar like phenomenon called ball lighting or something like that so I would imagine it was that, but I wouldn’t imagine it would like stop above a ship….so…..thats weird. 

This is a fairly typical UFO sighting story. The informant believes it to be an explanation for a natural phenomenon, whereas the original storyteller believes it to be a UFO or alien spacecraft.

For more examples of UFO narratives see Bartholomew, Robert E. “From Airships to Flying Saucers: Oregon’s Place in the Evolution of UFO Lore.” Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 101, no. 2, 2000, pp. 192–213. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20615052. Accessed 13 May 2021.