Time: 5:00 p.m.
I don't know if you'll find this interesting, but I sure as hell did. It's old stuff now. In the years since, I couldn't find anyone interested. Maybe because there weren't any little green men. (Definitely not as exciting as Rex Heflin's pictures taken in Irvine in '65. I'd known Rex for years before his incident and actually saw the original photos he'd taken.
My dad rented a house to him for years. It was June, probably 25-30 years ago (I've got it written down somewhere, but where it is now...) and I was on the way home, going north on the Newport Freeway, headed for Norco. At that time, the Newport was three lanes each way, plus the shoulder and a dirt island between the two ways. The island was probably the equivalent of two or three lanes width.
Anyway, I'm going north, it's right at 5:00 p.m. give or take five minutes, when I see a big shadow going in the same direction, but not totally parallel, as it was slowly moving toward me. At that time of the year, the sun's on the way down, but still fairly high in the sky. I looked out my window (driver window) to look for whatever it was casting this shadow.
Being that the shadow was that close to me, whatever cast it had to the pretty close to the sun. I didn't see anything and looked back at the shadow. I was between the Katella Avenue off-ramp and the 91 freeway. Right there you're in a very shallow bowl and you can see the freeway all the way to the bend that takes one to the 91 or Riverside Fwy. You can also see the homes up on Lemon Heights. Well, the shadow's continuing up the freeway, but slowly coming into my side of the freeway.
It's huge. I look up again to see what's making it and still, nothing. I keep watching it and before long, the shadow has completely darkened the freeway. Six lanes, two shoulders and the island. And it overlapped on both sides. You figure out how big it was. Anyway, I looked up again (the shadow at this point was way in front of me) and still nothing to cast it.
It eventually left the freeway (still arcing to the right) and wriggled like a shadow does over the homes on the slopes. My wife and I owned a typesetting and graphic design business in Tustin. If you know anything about printing, they have what's called a screening process (a Screen is the normal term). Using a screen on a color gives it the illusion of changing the color, but actually all you're doing is making the dot pattern smaller or larger, making the picture look darker and lighter.
Well, using the idea of a "Screen", (the further one would be from the source of the shadow, it would lighten up.) the shadow was about as dark as you could get, indicating whatever was casting the shadow was pretty damn close to the ground.
I was on the noisy freeway so I couldn't be sure whether it was making noise or not, but when jets came over to land at John Wayne Airport, you could hear them. Also, I was probably making about 50 mph, and if so, I figured whatever cast that shadow was doing no more then 120. Pretty slow to keep something that big in the air.
If you have seen anything like this in the same area please be kind enough to contact Brian Vike at: sighting@telus.net with the details of your sighting. All personal information is kept confidential.
Sightings.com website: http://www.sightings.com/
