Three sightings: disc, zig-zagging star, bar of lightI was a freshman in high school in 1967. School went into recess for a month to allow students to participate in the potato harvest (in the northeastern tip of Maine). My best friend and I were "picking potatoes" one afternoon and as I was taking a breather I noticed a silver disk slowly skimming across the top of a narrow strip of trees about one-eighth of a mile away. I didn't hear any noise at all and did not observe any lights. It was not rotating. I said to my friend, "Look at that!" It continued on its path just above the swath of trees until we could no longer see it. I observed this object for about 10 seconds. My friend and I both decided to do an oral English report on our sighting, but he backed out and I ended up doing it alone. I got the whole spectrum of reactions. Loring Air Force Base was in the immediate vicinity, about 5 miles away. I grew up watching all kinds of planes fly through our rural skies (including B-52s). This thing was nothing like what we were used to seeing flying out of Loring. I've always felt that it was extraterrestrial. That was the strong impression I had at the time. I have come to believe that this craft was scoping out Loring A.F.B. There was an incident, called "The Loring Incident" which occurred in 1975 wherein discs of unknown origin hovered over Loring's nuclear weapons depot unchallenged, 5 feet off the ground; it resulted in about a dozen more Air Force Bases nationwide being put on a heightened state of alert. I had another sighting in July 1972 in the same general area. I was laying on my back on the high-dive of a camp pool on a cloudless Maine night. The stars are so clear and thick on these Maine nights that you feel you can reach out your hand and scoop out a bunch of them with your hand. Zero urban light interference. What I saw was a medium-bright "star" in the night sky that zig-zagged down the horizon, paused, and then retraced its path to where I had first seen it move. Then it faded to black and that was the end of it. This lasted about 15 minutes. Again, this UFO was, in effect, if not in actuality, directly over Loring A.F.B. Loring A.F.B. was the SECOND air force base to store atomic warheads. (The first was in New Mexico where the bomb was developed.) I had a third sighting in West New York, New Jersey, in March, 1997 (across the Hudson River from New York City). At sunset I looked out a window facing south and saw a bar of bright light suspended in the sky; it did not move. I looked at it through my 10-power binoculars. It looked like pure energy. No surface or texture of any kind was visible, just this blazing cylinder of golden-white light. It was beautiful. It was three times as long as it was wide. It was hanging in the sky at an angle, not straight up and down. I watched it for about 30 minutes and then had to get some sleep before going to work that night. When I woke up later it had gone.((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD))