MUFON Case # 22658
Event Date: 05/22/2005 13:00
Location: Center of Lake Michigan
Region: Michigan
Shape: Square/Rectangular
Distance: One mile or less
Terrain: Lake
Visibility: Clear
Weather: None
Vallee Index: MA1
Summary: Mid-Day UFO near center of Lake Michigan in May 2005
Report:
A group of 3 of us, myself - a manufacturing business owner, my brother a Firefighter/Paramedic, and a family friend were traveling from Saugatuck, MI on a 38' Chris Craft yacht, crossing Lake Michigan on the way to our marina just south of Chicago in Burnham, IL (CroissantMarina.info). This was a 15 hour ride and we were about 6 hours into the trip when we were circled by an F4 jet several times at very low altitude. This jet was so close we could clearly see the pilot in the cockpit (about 40 feet over the water). I do not know if this is related to what happened 30 minutes later but we all found it very odd to see an Air Force jet in that area taking a closer look at us. Of all times I've been on the lake I've never seen a fighter jet or anything odd, and I've been out there since 1994.
Eventually the jet vanished and was never to be seen again. About 30 minutes later we noticed an odd looking object to our starboard side (we were traveling SSW at the time). This object was nothing any of us had ever seen and didn't look like the commonly known UFO either. It was not a cigar or disc and it was not a triangle. It was the strangest looking thing. It was completely black and almost looked like a bunch of legos a child threw together, where the long rectangular shape had odd ends like steps but completely uneven. It's very hard to describe. There were no lights, no sounds. Just complete silence. We idled down and proceeded to the bow to observe this thing. It was hovering above the water, about 10 feet above the 1' wave caps. It was about 500 feet wide, almost like a large building on it's side floating over the water. We were about 6 blocks to 1 mile away.
After about 10 minutes of watching this thing it began to move our way, and we were all getting a bit nervous being that we were in deep waters and all alone. Outside of cellular range and poor chances of a good VHF distress call, our feelings were becoming uneasy quickly. I guess we just feared this object because we didn't know what it was or why it was even there. I hopped back inside the cabin to take the helm and threw her port & starboard engines in forward at idle to get ready to start moving out of there. I wanted to know what I was seeing but I was way to nervous to see what would happen if I let it come close. At that moment I myself, along with our family friend and my brother, observed this crazy looking thing move across the water from our starboard side to directly in front of our bow (keeping the same 6 blocks or so away from us and holding the same 10' hover over the water). What really shocked us was the speed of the object. It traveled an estimated 10 nautical miles in about 2 seconds. There was just a long black streak across the horizon and then it stopped and just sat there in front of us. I dropped the vessel back to neutral and just sat there as we all discussed what the heck was happening. Seconds later it jumped right back to our starboard side where it was before and again just hovered over the water. That was enough, we throttled up and began heading SSW again, constantly observing the object as we moved on. Eventually we lost the object in the distance and never saw it again.
The date was, for sure, May 22nd, 2005. That's the only time we ever made this trip.
We had no cameras, have no photos, but it happened. The trip was being made for a single purpose, to move a boat I bought at Tower Marine in Douglas, MI to my local marina. It wasn't a pleasure cruise. In June of this year I am returning to the GPS coordinates where this happened, still saved on my GPS. I'll be going back with a couple friends and possibly my brother again if he can make it. My hope is to see this again, although it's been 5 years now, ya never know. This time we're bringing camcorders and cameras.
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Wow, surprised to see this. I gave this info to to MUFON years ago. It was an awesome sight, but scary at the same time. We were all talking about this just a few months ago. The 'depiction' photo is close but it had more height and more 'blocks' sticking out of it on the front too, like the sides. It's now July 2013 and we have never seen this thing, hopefully one day, we're still out there every year. We've since sold the old Chris Craft called 'Boat Ox' and have a Carver today so we're always out at the lake, and I always hope to get a photo of what I saw 8 years back. It sounds crazy, but it really did happen. All 3 of us saw that thing about 2 or 3 pm that day.
ReplyDeleteIt was a very unusual sighting that you had. Having never seen this myself, I drew the depiction per your description. If you ever get a second chance of seeing this object and taking a photo, I would be very interested in seeing it.
ReplyDelete