Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Man recalls '86 encounter with strange craft

If you're driving at night through North Carolina mountains, you may spot something out of the ordinary, something that might even change your life. It happened for one couple back in 1986.
One night 23 years ago, a husband and wife were headed home on their motorcycle. It was a clear dark night and they were traveling through the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. The moon was not shining that night.
"As we rode along at a leisurely pace, I looked up and saw something that made me immediately pull over and yank my helmet off," reads the man's report on a Web site. "My wife did likewise. Directly overhead, maybe 300 feet up, was a huge triangle. It was very difficult to make out the actual craft."
The large hovering triangle had three red lights on each point. The weird craft was very big, perhaps 100 yards long between each of the lights. It was also totally silent and moved along very slowly, perhaps 5 to 10 miles per hour as it cruised overhead.
"I remember thinking how easy it would have been to hit it if I had a pistol," reads the man's report. "I was thinking of the distance above and not because I would have actually shot it. I would NOT have."
The man wrote in his account that the weird hovering craft "felt very heavy" and "very ominous."
"I was concerned at first that it would fall straight down and crush us like a bug," he wrote. "It moved from the south to the north, and was in sight for about a minute or minute and a half."
Then the UFO did something that really shocked the married couple. Up until that point, the triangle-shaped craft hovered flat with one red light toward the front and the other two in the back, away from the couple. When it got maybe a mile or so away from them, it stopped, turned up on its side and cartwheeled off into the eastern sky.
"That blew me away!!" reads the man's online report. "I was at first thinking it was perhaps some (government) craft or whatever…but when it did that, I had the definite impression that it knew it was being watched and wanted to put on a show. That may be wrong but that's what I felt."
The man kept asking his wife if she saw the same thing he did and she asserted she did.
"We were seeing the same thing in all respects," the man wrote in his report. "I'll never forget it. After that, I read and studied the phenomenon a bit and have found out that many triangles have been seen."
A few weeks later, the couple experienced a very strange series of sightings at their mountain cabin, which was located a few miles from where the first encounter took place. They saw bright objects in the sky that flashed red, blue, green and white colors.
"Whether the events were related or not I have no idea…but since that time we have seen many, many of the flashing lights that so many people have seen and continue to see to this day on occasion," read the man's report. "This is the really short version of the events of early April 1986 and there are many details but the main thing is we absolutely experienced a close up look at the triangular UFO and felt the 'vibes' from it. It was not bad feeling just very imposing.
"I still have no really firm opinion as to the origins of the thing. I cannot help but think it is from another place or time. I have told several people about this incident and a few old-timers around here say that they have seen 'strange things' flying around the mountains here for a long time."
This story can be found on www.abovetopsecret.com, which is billed as the most popular Web site for alternative topics, conspiracy theories and paranormal subjects. You too can take part in the intriguing discussions there.