UFOs over Winder...?

“Today more people believe in UFOs than believe that Social Security will take care of their retirement.” – Scott Cook

I admit it; I’m a sucker for anything paranormal. I love ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. I watch vampire shows. I’m not a zombie fan, but I find those ever blurry photos of the Sasquatch to be intriguing. So, imagine how exciting it was for me to hear about a UFO sighting right outside of Winder, and it turned out, in Athens, Dacula, Buford and Lawrenceville at about the same time.   

The sightings occurred on the night of Jan. 15 at about 8 p.m. I heard about them on Jan. 16, at the place where one hears most breaking local news – the hair salon. It seems a good friend of the salon owner called her the night before, sounding rattled, to tell her about the UFO the friend and her son had just seen, hovering over their house off Hog Mountain Rd.

The conversation started with, “I’ve not had a drop to drink…” and I can tell you from my experience, the woman who saw the UFO is one of the last people in Winder I’d expect to hear a UFO story from. She’s just too down to earth (pardon my pun) to believe in that type of thing. So, when I heard who the source of the UFO story was, my ears perked up even more…After all, in this case, it had to be true!

Around 8:30 p.m. the woman and her son arrived home. Her son got out to get the mail and at 8:34 p.m. the woman looked up and saw a line of lights, some red, some white, hovering in front of the car. The colored lights were flashing, the white ones were not. The object was about the size of an 18-wheeler and it made no noise at all.

After calling her son back into the car and locking the doors, the woman tried to get a movie of the object with her phone, but the movie wouldn’t take – not even the flashing lights showed up. She then called her sister-in-law, who lives nearby, to tell her about the thing that was hovering silently in front of her car.

“I know,” said the sister-in-law. “There’s one hovering over my house, too.” The sister-in-law’s daughter was home and was so scared at the sight of the thing that she began to cry. Then, while the two women were still on the phone, both objects silently rose up and disappeared into the night.  

Once in the house and calmed down, the woman called the sheriff to ask if there was some training exercise or something going on. He said he was not aware of anything…

Back at the hair salon, staff and clients had spent the day (in between cuts and color, of course) searching for similar reports on the internet and ufostalker.com had the full scoop:

-          7:16 p.m., Athens, GA – “from my upstairs window I observed 6-8 pulsating red lights moving in a SE to SW line at about 500+ knots.”  (1 knot = 1.15 miles per hour)

-          8:15 p.m., Lawrenceville, GA – “white and red horizontal lights in the sky on a cloudless, clear night.”

-          8:30 p.m., Dacula, GA – “large light formation that resembled nothing that could be explained traveling across the sky with unusual unfamiliar characteristics.”

Similar sightings (on other blogs) were also described in Buford and Rutledge, GA at about the same time. From Buford, a woman reported: “There were 10 lights total; some were solid red, some were flashing red; they were all traveling in formation. They were coming from the direction of Winder and were headed towards Atlanta. There was no up or down movement. I couldn’t tell if it was one single or multiple objects. It made no sound at all.”

In Griffin, GA ‘two extremely large aircraft with blinking lights, definitely NOT airplanes” were reported on ufostalker.com. Later that night, a “large dark mass framed by lights or escorted/hauled by aircraft” was reported near Birmingham, AL and “8-10 bright red objects with a larger white object in the middle, alternating beacon-type lights with the red objects, traveling in a straight line” in Farmerville, AL. 

Coincidentally (or not), the day before, Jan. 14, a Winder man working downtown reported seeing a “white object in the sky” when he went out for a smoke break at 9:30 a.m. Initially the object appeared to be stationary, then it moved across the sky, stopped, then went “straight up really fast for a second, then stopped again.” The man reported (on ufostalker.com) “the speed it went up was not something I’d seen before. I’m not saying this was a UFO, but it moved faster than a normal object can. It also stopped twice and just sat there. If it was a plane, it’s not like any plane I’ve ever seen or heard of.” (He caught a cell phone photo, but didn’t post it with his report.)    

Since the story has been circulating on local blogs and such, other reports of people seeing the Hog Mountain Rd. UFOs have been posted.

Did aliens from outer space visit our area? You make the call…All I know is I can hardly wait for my next hair cut appointment. Maybe while I wait my turn, we can watch a few more of those mermaid sightings on You Tube.