textfiles/ufo/SIGHTINGS/wseattl1.ufo

      
                      West Seattle, Washington UFO Report
                            Saturday, March 5, 1988

      PART I:     Narrative of principal witness, male, age 43
         Transcribed from notes by Dr. Donald Johnson, March 13, 1988
      
           At approximately 9:30 p.m. I left the ARCO convenience 
      store at the southwest corner of Fauntleroy and SW Alaska St. 
      and noticed the object while facing east.  It was "sitting" 
      [hovering] over towards the golf course and club house.  I live 
      on Fauntleroy and Dawson, about 4 blocks south of Fauntleroy and 
      Alaska.  I looked at it, then looked away then back for about 3 
      or 4 seconds.  It wasn't sitting on the ground, but if it had it 
      would have crushed the clubhouse, because it would have been 
      right over it.  [Later at the clubhouse he revised this comment 
      to say that it was probably not over the clubhouse but in a 
      clearing between the highway and the golf course to the right of 
      the clubhouse--an area some 500 yards long and 100 yards wide.  
      It is important to note that if the UFO had been near the ground 
      in this area it would have been hidden from view to the south by 
      trees, to the north by the West Seattle high school stadium, and 
      from 35th S.W. by a hill.]  It was huge--I don't know what a 
      "mothership" is (we get our terminology from TV), but it was 
      like a mothership, it was big.
      
           [Later at the intersection he described the size of the 
      object as stretching from a rotating motel sign on the left to a 
      tall evergreen tree on the right, a distance that would be 
      covered by 3 inches of a ruler held at arm's length.  His 
      estimate on the report form that the apparent size of the object 
      was as large as a 12" ruler held at arm's length was therefore 
      an exaggeration.]
      
           I shouted back and called [his girlfriend's] attention to it.   
      It moved to the left, then to the right, then it moved away and up 
      until it was out of sight.
      
           While we were watching it we stood in the middle of the 
      intersection and nearly got run over by two or three cars.  One 
      guy who almost hit me honked and said, "are you nuts?", and I 
      said, "no man, look at that".  He stopped and said "is someone 
      hurt" and then he saw the object.  He saw it while it was in 
      motion.  We watched it until the damn thing disappeared.  The 
      other witness--a guy 25 to 30 years old, heavy build with a 
      blond mustache, 5'9 to 5'11, well dressed in sweater and 
      slacks--said, "somebody's playing a joke, right?", and I said, 
      "No, I've been watching it for about 30 seconds."
      
           I didn't hear anything like a hum or a buzz like you would 
      get from an airplane.  There was nothing.  [When questioned 
      about his note on the sketch made earlier that said "humming 
      sound":]  I heard a humming sound like the electric [cooling] 
      fan on a car after the engine is turned off, but it was probably 
      the car of the guy who stopped.  I'm almost sure the sound 
      didn't come from the object.
      
           The other guy said he was on his way to Jake O'Shaunnessy's 
      Restaurant to meet someone and had to get going.  I said I was 
      going to go down to the golf course and check that out.  I went 
      down to the clubhouse parking lot, there were only two cars 
      there, parked in front of the clubhouse.  I didn't see anything 
      more unusual there.  The stadium lights were on at the West 
      Seattle High stadium there at the park.
      
           The first thing I thought when I saw it was that it was a 
      carbon arc [searchlight], and I was looking around first for a 
      carbon-arc searchlight to see if there was some source of the 
      light.  I used to be a projectionist and used to work on the 
      carbon arc.  You could project the pictures on the clouds with 
      one of those things if you wanted to.  But it was definitely a 
      physical object.
      
      [Asked about the weather conditions that night:]  There was a 
      full moon that night.  The moon looked huge that night.  It was 
      clear, there were sparse clouds but not "en masse" so you 
      couldn't see the sky.
      
           I hadn't been drinking and I don't do any drugs.
      
      [Asked about his line of work:]  I run a shoe repair concession 
      with two other men in the Nordstrom's Men Shoe department, and 
      I'm a part-time musician (percussion and piano).
      
      [Asked about his familiarity with UFO literature:]  We saw the 
      Betty and Barney Hill movie, I used to watch a TV series in the 
      '60s called Project Blue Book, one of my favorite movies is "The 
      Day the Earth Stood Still", and I read Shirley MacLaine's book 
      "Out on a Limb".
      
      [Asked about a description of the object:]  The object was 
      metallic blue color.  It was shaped like this [makes an ellipse 
      in the air with his two hands], but it wasn't flat like you 
      would think a flying saucer should be.  It had greenish yellow 
      lights in a row--six of them the same size.  There were three 
      rings of rotating white light:  the one on the left was rotating 
      counter-clockwise and the one on the right was rotating 
      clockwise and the one on the bottom was probably rotating 
      clockwise.  It had a blue thing on top like the radar detector 
      on an AWAC aircraft.  It may not have been attached.