Examiner
BOVARD, PA - JAN. 3, 2009 - A cylinder-shaped UFO hovered just 250 feet above the ground here in broad daylight as a man watched from his car in this small community just outside of Greensburg.
Ufologist Stan Gordon got the witness call soon after the event - which occured at about 1:30 p.m. He said the witness - a businessman who was traveling in the area - first saw the object on the opposite side of Route 30 from Greensburg's Westmoreland Mall - where the two-lane Donahoe Road winds behind a Sheraton Hotel into the country side.
The man was driving along Donahoe Road when he saw the object at a low level moving from his right to left. He made a left turn onto Crows Nest Road and stopped in the middle of the road to get a better look at it. The man moved a little further down the road and was eventually about 250 feet from the object, which hovered about 250 in the air.
The following is Investigator Stan Gordon's account based on witness testimony.
The 2009 year has started out with a detailed, low level daylight UFO observation. The incident occurred on January 3, 2009, at about 1:30 p.m., near the small community of Bovard, in Westmoreland County, which is located just a few miles from the city of Greensburg.
The witness is a businessman who was traveling through the area at the time. The man was driving his vehicle down Donahoe Road and was talking on the cell phone when he noticed, to his left, what he thought was an aircraft moving very low across the sky. The aerial object appeared to be moving over Bovard toward the tunnel, so it was moving from the right toward the left. The driver made a left off of Donahoe Road, and turned onto Crows Nest Road, from where the object could be seen ahead. He was so dazed by what he was observing, that he stopped in the middle of the road.
After the initial phone call from the witness, we met at the location of the sighting where I conducted the second interview . I was told that the object seemed to be hovering just above the trees and the railroad trestle. The witness watched the object hover, and was trying to rationalize to himself what this object was. The man described what he saw as appearing bright metallic, and something like a cylinder in shape, "kind of like a hot dog with a fin on the back."
The witness told me that he drove a little further down the road to get a closer look from where he could see the object unobstructed. The witness estimated that he was about 250 feet away from the object. He also felt that the object was also about 250 feet in the air.
As he watched, the object inverted itself. As it was explained to me, the object flipped up from the bottom to the top. The witness stated, "when it inverted, and the fin disappeared, it looked like a totally different craft." The object looked more like a saucer with some type of ridges or bumps, or rivets on it, which appeared to define the object. These structures could possibly have been ports, windows, or circles.
They were seemingly rounded, about 10 to 12 in number, and were evenly spaced. They were located toward the lower edge of the object, but apparently not underneath it. From the observer's distance to the object, he estimated it to be about 15 to 20 feet in length, and it did not appear to be very wide.
As the object hovered up and down, it dropped to about 150-200 feet in the air. It then seem to come to a complete stop. It continued to hover about 10 seconds over trees, then the object suddenly moved from a hovering level position, then moved to the left, then "in a backwards J-shape motion, it shot up approximately 50 to 60 feet" higher in the sky. After the object had accelerated, it moved off in the direction of Greensburg.
The duration of the entire observation was about two minutes. The witness was very upset after his observation. He told me that he became very shaky and nervous. After his sighting, the man went home and told his family about what he had seen. He said they looked at him like he was nuts. He said that by then, his body was so shaken and nervous, ''and my stomach was completely sick."
The witness had called in the initial report to see if others in the area had reported what he had seen. So far, this is the only report locally for that date.
