West Virginia UFO Sightings in 1988

Full Report Text:

Being followed by something unknown. my brother, sisters, my mother and I were driving on the way back to our house. Well to get to our house you have to drive up a moutain, literally.

I remember looking out the back window of the car and seeing a rounded object in the sky and it appeared to be following us on the base of the moutain. It had multi-colored lights and they all blinked on and off simutaniously(spelling???). I remember my brother also commenting on the event and we were all astonished by what we saw.

It was nothing like we had ever seen before. It was moving to slow to be an airplane, and it seemed to just follow us like it wanted to know where we were going, it gave us an excited but eerie sensation. After all we were all younger then! But we all knew that what we saw was ABSOLUTELY NOT AN AIRPLANE.

Even to this day that is something that one can NEVER FORGET! I don't really recall the actual month day and year that we had saw this unusual - force - in the sky behind us, but I do recall that it was slightly cold outside and it was dark. slightly cold as in a SEPT. OCT.

or NOV. kind of night. and another weird thing that I have also observed not only with the sighting that my siblings and I had witnessed, but as in others that I have read about or heard about, alot or a great percent is near a moutain.

WHY? Do they want something from around or inside the moutains, is it better for them to sneek around near moutains, I don't understand but just thinking about it is a little eerie. ((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD)).

Full Report Text:

Witnessed "military" C-130 releasing dozens of parachutists to meet with cigar-shaped UFO I was hiking and camping with a good friend in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia. I know this area well and have camped there maybe a hundred times previously. We were sitting on a rocky point called Lion’s Head.

It is on the west side of Red Creek and from there we could see most of Red Creek Valley from Bear Rocks area up in the north to where it curves sharply toward the west toward Laneville, WV in the south. We were effectively looking down in to a long bowl. Suddenly, a C130 transport plane appeared over the mountain to the south at treetop level.

As it cleared the mountain top it dropped down to the valley floor and hugged the treetops. As it came past us it was flying below the point at which we were sitting. It followed the creek up toward the area known as Bear Rocks.

As it approached the top of the plateau in the north it suddenly rose high into the sky and a dozens of paratroopers jumped out of it. The plane continued and we neve! r saw it again. We were somewhat amazed at this, the land where we were was a designated wilderness area, and further up near Bear Rocks the land was owned by the power company.

We wondered why the military would be conducting exercises there. We decided to hike up to Bear Rocks to see what we could see. We arrived at Bear Rocks with daylight to spare.

We looked around for any signs of these men and in spite of the fact that we were able to see the entire plateau from there, we saw nothing. We decided to setup camp there and spend the night. The evening was uneventful.

Then at around 10pm we heard a noise. It sounded like generators. Looking toward the northwest we could see lights and activity in the middle of the plateau on a small hill.

We could see people moving around in the lights and could hear the whirring of the generators. Occasionally, we could hear a person yell out, but we did not understand what they said. All of a sudden, we were surprised to see a huge cigar shaped craft move slowly over the scene from the north.

It was between 150-200 feet long and had small round windows along its length. It made no apparent noise. The activity was frenzied beneath this craft and went on for nearly 15 minutes.

Then suddenly the lights and sound disappeared. We could not see! anything else at this point. We did not see the craft leave, nor did we see where the people on the ground went.

We were a bit nervous about being there that night, but we figured they were far enough away that they would not bother us. We got up quite early and left. On our way home we decided to stop by my friends parents house.

They lived in a valley in Winchester, Virginia alongside the same mountain ridge as our sighting. They were both scientists and we were excited to tell them about it. My friends Mother had designed the original lenses for the first Land Sat satellite, and his father was currently designing some method for detecting marijuana plants from space for the government.

The point is, these two were not stupid. Upon hearing our story they asked us if we had been smoking any wacky weed. They seemingly had a hard time keeping a straight face and I think they really believed we were hallucinating.

We then went home, both of us frustrated by their ridicule. About 6 months later I got a call from my friend’s father. He said, “do you remember the UFO you and my son told us about? Well the whole valley has seen it.

It has been hovering over the north end of the valley for the past two weekends. The police cannot or will not identify it. We all saw it.

” He went on to apologize for not believing us previously. Many years later I spoke with someone very connected to the UFO field, a good friend actually, he mentioned a story a CIA man told him. He said the CIA man asked him where he though most UFO activity related to the government took place.

My friend answered, "Area 51". "No", he said, "West Virginia". He continued, "The mountains there are full of caves and underground bases and located very close to Washington, D.

C. When someone has to go out and meet with one of them, they can sneak out and be back in a few hours. The president, for instance, is watched closely.

There is no way he could get out to a place like Area 51 without someone noticing, but it is easy for him to sneak out in a car in the middle of the night unnoticed and be back before anyone can realize he was gone". ((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date is approximate. PD)).

Full Report Text:

Between the years of 1985 and 1989, I was working for a coal company that leased property from Western Pocahontas Properties in Dolly Sods, West Virginia, and surrounding areas. At that time the military was using these same properties to practice maneuvers, and had been doing so all summer and winter, or for about a year. They were somewhat in contact with our company, so we would not interfere with each other’s activities.

During that period of time, myself and about six friends decided that we would do an early spring campout in the Bear Rocks area of northern Dolly Sods. The weather was nice and not too cold or windy, but the winter snow was still covering the road on top of the mountain. We drove up forest road 75, from the Jordan Run Road, and were able to get within 1/3-mile of the mountain top at Bear Rocks.

There is a wide spot where we parked, then proceeded north on foot up through deep snow drifts, to the parking area at the top of the mountain. The road on top was impassable with deep snow drifts and some bare spots. From the parking lot we walked northwest 1/3-mile to a spot in a clump spruce trees where we would camp for the night.

This location is latitude N39°04’10” longitude W79°18’20” at an elevation of about 4000 feet. That evening at dusk, members of our party were setting up tents at the southern edge of the spruce trees in the open field. A friend and I were struggling to get a camp fire started, in the shelter of spruce trees about 50-yards away.

We were having trouble getting the spruce wood to burn, but were making progress and finally had a camp fire going, when members at the southern edge called to come over and take a look. My friend stayed with the fire and I went down to the others for a better view of what they were looking at. Off in the distance to the south and about 1-mile away, two lights were traveling northeast along forest road 75, towards Bear Rocks.

It looked like two vehicle headlights. Just a single light each. We were all discussing “how could this be?” because the road was covered with deep snow drifts.

I thought what I was viewing was four-wheelers, motorcycles or snowmobiles, but something just didn’t seem right. It was too dark to see the vehicles, but the headlights were very clear. I could see one pull ahead of the other, then the one in the rear would catch back up.

It looked like two small vehicles, on a clear road and running together at 10 to 25 miles per hour. The light was as bright as a headlight and looked white and artificial. As they traveled along the road they came to within about 1/3-mile of our position, but when they came to the parking lot, where the road turns sharply and goes south down off the mountain, they rose up into the air 20 or 30 feet and were ! flying over Bear Rocks.

Now the headlight looked more like a spot light, moving around and illuminating the rocks and vegetation beneath. The lights continued on a straight northeastern course and went down over the mountain side, not to be seen again. We were all shocked, without explanation of what we had just seen.

Were they flying the entire time? My friend back at the fire, covered it with snow, putting it out, so as not to reveal our position to the strange lights. The entire viewing lasted perhaps 5-minutes, while we observed the lights traveling for about a mile. No noise was heard at any time.

Later back at work, I told my boss about the strange lights we had seen. He said that he had been told other stories of strange lights in Dolly Sods. He mentioned it to the military person in charge, whose reply was that the military has some very quiet helicopters.

((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD)).