So you may have heard there was a UFO sighting in Bridgeport. On the evening of Oct. 27 – sometime between 8 and 9 .m. - a motorist passing through the city spotted the unidentified flying object hovering over Bridgeport Fire Department.  She filed a report about the incident and it has been recorded by Mutual UFO Network witness reporting database. The incident has been documented as MUFON Case No. 61818.

 

I kid you not.

 

The eyewitness account indicated that the unaccompanied aircraft was gray in color with white lights on each tip of its triangular shape. She said she watched the UFO until it disappeared – flying east in the direction of Grafton. The West Virginia MUFON – which recently has received an abnormal amount of UFO sightings – is investigating this case.

 

On its Web site, the MUFON organization reminds us that a UFO – although readily associated with an invasion of habitants of another planet – is simply an unidentified flying object. That could be anything natural or manmade.  

 

Aha.

 

I have to admit that when a member of the Bridgeport Firefighting staff first told me of the sighting, I suspected one of those guys were flying some remote control toy or something and had gotten a kick out of the report. But after my own investigation, a little informal interrogation of the source, I was convinced that the Bridgeport Fire Department had nothing whatsoever to do with the incident.

 

So what as it?

 

One theory is that it was a drone, the new-age flying robots which are on the forefront of technology. Essentially flying robots can be programmed with GPS or remotely controlled and are used for purposes associated with the military, search and rescue, surveillance, traffic and weather monitoring. Recently, they have been considered for personal/commercial use, like photography and delivery. Maybe that’s what was seen on the night of Oct. 27.

 

We may never know.

 

As I was about to tell the story of the sighting to my parents, they reminded me of an incident I had been told about long ago. It took place back in the late 1950s, when my mom and dad were courting. They were sitting on the porch of my mom’s family farmhouse when they saw an amazing site – a burst of technology right in the middle of the countryside. Both of their accounts are exactly the same. Out of nowhere came a triangular glow – three lights in a triangular shape whizzing round and round the circumference of their location. It lasted for several minutes. My dad, an air traffic controller at the time, had no explanation for what he was seeing. Nothing came of the incident – other than my grandma being a little ticked because they didn’t wake her to witness it.

 

UFO sightings are perhaps more common than one might think. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, there have been dozens of 2014 sightings right here in West Virginia, including a late-August Clarksburg incident. That one was reported as a non-flashing light. Others have been described as shiny silver cylinders, cobalt blue lighting flashes, circular green objects, red balls of fire and many other descriptions – including triangular-shaped lights.

 

The video below features a December 2011 sighting in the Mountain State. If you search YouTube, you will find others. 

 

What do you think?  

 

Julie Perine can be reached at 304-848-7200, julie@connect-bridgeport.com or follow @JuliePerine on Twitter. More "It's Happening" HERE.