14 Extraterrestrial Tales Curated from Reddit

These stories have it all — strange lights, missing time, oddly silent aircraft, and physics-defying movements.

The encounter abroad

This is a family story I've heard only twice. I can't remember how it was brought up the first time, but the explanation was very vague so I asked again a few months later when the family had come together at the cottage during summer. They seemed kind of...iffy talking about it but provided more details.

They live in Ukraine but took a trip to Turkey sometime in the 90s. They had rented a little cottage there that was far enough into the countryside to be considered fairly remote. Long story short, one evening the dogs outside started going absolutely crazy- barking viciously and just overall behaving erratically. One of them- my grandma's brother, I believe- went outside to check what was going on, and saw what they can only describe as a UFO nearing their cottage, pretty high up in the sky but lowering a bit as it came closer. He called for the rest of the family to come and see, and to this day they can still confirm what they saw (well, the ones that are still alive, at least). They said it was triangle-shaped and had three lights, one in each corner. When it got seriously close to the house, they really began to panic and ran back inside. The very walls were shaking, dishes were breaking from the force of the vibrations going throughout the walls and floor, and the dogs outside were barking louder than ever.

It hovered over the cottage for several minutes before ascending back up and disappearing. These are all people who are very conservative and rational, and they hate discussions regarding the supernatural, so I have no doubt in my mind that they were telling the truth.

—judithgrimes

When the aliens crashed the sleepover

When I was about 12, my best friends and I used to sleep out on my friend’s trampoline in his yard in the summer. We would gather our bed stuff and bounce around till we got tired, then eventually lay down and go to sleep.

One evening, four of us were laying on the trampoline talking when we notice that there's something floating over the woods nearby. You couldn't see it directly, just that it blocked the stars out as it slowly moved. It was just a little higher than the tree tips tops and completely silent. We were just some dumb kids so we just watched it. Slowly it drifted until it was directly over top of us. Then suddenly there was this light that I cannot describe. It was more than blindingly bright. It was disorientingly, cripplingly bright like it shone down into you. The next thing I remember, we were all standing inside my friend’s house looking out his sliding glass back door at the object still hovering there, and then it glided away. We were all spooked, but we decided to go back out to go to bed on the trampoline. We're laying there for a while and the next thing we know, it comes back again and does the exact same thing. Again, we find ourselves inside looking out the back door.

Beyond all reason, we go back outside to bed again, same thing happens AGAIN. We finally decided to sleep inside with the lights on.

My friends and I lost touch as we grew up, but when I was 18, I heard one of them was in town. I ran into him at a party one night and pulled him to the side to ask him about that night as it had bothered me for some time. His response has shaken me to this day. I cannot describe his reaction sufficiently. He looked at the ground and said "I don't wanna talk about it." I was kinda shocked by his response, so I didn't know what to say. He got up and walked out and I stayed sitting there thinking about what just happened. I got up after a minute to go see if I could find him, but he'd left immediately after. That was it. Haven't seen him or the others. But his response was enough to let me know something strange definitely went down that night. I don't know if I want to remember.

—insomniacrobat

The low-flying triangle

About two years ago I was in Naples, Florida, with my friend. We were on the porch having a smoke around 11 p.m. I was leaning on the railing when what I thought was a plane in the distance turned towards us. It was flying so low that the front lights blinded us. My friend scrambled for his phone which turned out to be dead, and I, fearing I would miss it, didn't want to run inside to grab my phone. Though the craft was steadily gliding, it was all happening so fast. As the object got closer we noticed it was a huge black triangle with three, huge circular lights on the bottom. It was so close, just above the trees right in front of the building. It was so silent. The only thing making any sound was the trees rustling below the craft. Then the huge black triangle [expletive] turned on a dime right In front of us and disappeared over the tops of the buildings. I wouldn't have believed what I saw if I didn't see it with someone else.

—UserNo800

Don’t tell anyone

This is a story of my father’s. It happened in 1982 while my father was stationed on a military base in New Brunswick. One night my father's best friend and his girlfriend left just after dark to go see Tron at a movie theatre. About an hour later, the friend and his girlfriend were back on the base. The car pulled in, and my father immediately noticed that it was damaged pretty badly and covered in several different colors of paint. My father asked them what had happened, why they had not gone to the movie. They brushed him off and went to bed. A few days later, my father got his friend to tell him what had happened. They were driving along a stretch of highway and they noticed lights coming from over a hill just ahead (where no lights should be because there was nothing around for miles). Just at the base of that hill was a parking lot for a park. A bunch of cars were pulling into the parking lot to investigate the lights, so my father's friend pulled in too. Everyone got out of their cars and was about to start hiking to the top of the hill when a large disk with flashing lights rose above the hill's peak and emitted a loud, strange sound. Several cars got banged up in everyone's panic to get away, thus the transfer of paint. My father's friends drove back to the base as fast as possible. A few days later, men in black suits showed up on the base looking for people. They talked to my father's friend and then sent him on his way. My father asked him what the men wanted to see him for. The men told the friend that he better shut up say nothing about anything that happened if he wanted to keep his military career.

—kkm1992

Aliens came to see the comet

Back in the Spring of 1997 a group of kids from my neighborhood were looking up at the night sky observing the Hale Bopp comet. After a while, we started to notice a red and a white dot circling around each other making sudden movements in every direction like no aircraft I have ever seen or have ever seen since. At one point, they merged into one craft then shot out three smaller crafts although we couldn't tell whether it was a craft because they just appeared to be balls of light. This went on for a couple of hours. Right before the lights disappeared they accelerated at lightning-fast speed into the darkness. We all went home terrified of what we saw.

The next day on the front page of our small hometown paper, it said it received several calls. The explanation they gave was that the local airport was testing aircraft. To this day whenever I see my friends that were there that night, we'll sometimes talk about it. None of us can be sure what were saw but to this day none of us have ever seen anything like it.

—Yoga_Butt

The Rural Visitor

As a kid back in the 80s, I was spending the night at my Aunt and Uncle's house which was out in the sticks in Tennessee. I was sleeping on the couch and woke up due to a bright light coming through the kitchen window and into the living room. I was looking towards the light which was white and slightly flickering. After about 10 minutes I turned my head as it was now keeping me awake.

After a few minutes I turned my head back towards the light and was about to go sleep on the love seat. I see a tall dark figure standing between myself and the light. I was frozen and could not move or scream. It approached me, reached out and began tapping on my forehead with what felt like a nail or something pointed. This went on another few minutes until I must have fallen or was put to sleep.

I woke up the next morning to a quiet house. I go into the bathroom and I have a red spot on my forehead and the skin was slightly broken but no blood

—seeker469

The no-fly zone

I haven't had any encounters with aliens, but my mom has. On 9/11/2001 (Yes, I'm serious), my mom went on a walk on the waterway after watching the news for hours. This was in the evening time, so the "No commercial flights" sanction was already in place. While on her walk, she looked up after feeling like someone or something was watching her, and she saw a triangular aircraft floating above her. At first she thought it might have been a military craft of some sort, but then realized it was making absolutely no noise. She said it was so low to the ground that she probably could have touched it if she wanted to, but before she could reach out and touch it, the craft zipped away quickly with no sound at all.

—watermelonpizzafries

Orbiting near an earthquake

2010, Los Angeles. I was cleaning up around my apartment when I noticed my kitchen lamp swinging and my building rocking. Obviously, it was an earthquake. It lasted for a bit, and I called my friend to make sure she was ok. As we were chatting, I was standing out on my balcony which overlooks Runyon Canyon, a popular hiking trail. I suddenly noticed this object hovering high in between the mountains.

It was way too high to be a helicopter and too small and low to be a plane. What made it SUPER strange was its shape and lack of movement. It was orb-esque and stood stagnant for about a solid 3 minutes before moving at a SNAIL'S PACE to the west. I'm talking slower than any aircraft, blimp, kite, whatever, that I've ever seen. It also seemed to reflect off the sun, but only at some angles.

After moving towards the left and then once again staying completely still, it immediately darted at what seemed like an impossible speed in the opposite direction upwards and disappeared.

—xcdrummerchic

Something helped us in the swamp

I was 12 at the time and my family has a camp on the Tangipahoa River in Louisiana. The only way you can get to it is by boat. So it was just my uncle, my cousin, and myself and we were heading back to the boat launch on a Sunday night. Now the boat we were in didn't have any working lights, so to see where we were going my uncle would occasionally shoot a flare. We quickly ran out of the flares you shoot as it is around a 2-hour boat ride back to the landing. So I ended up on the front of the boat holding a regular flare as we were now on a much narrower stretch of river.

To our left in the swamp, two large glowing balls appeared. Then there was another one to the right. I was just trying to keep the flare from burning me, and my little cousin was freaking out. After around 10 minutes of them navigating through the swamp, they formed a triangle above us on the river. It is hard to gauge how far up they were, but it was very visible.

They continued to follow us for the rest of the journey back to the landing, and as soon as we arrived they disappeared. This all happened around 18 years ago but it is something I will never forget. I don't talk about this stuff really and usually just keep it to myself.

—skittishgibbon

It cast a huge shadow

This was about 40 years ago, we were camping in the summer in the woods behind a friend's house. About 11 p.m., we had to walk back to the house for something. It was a full moon, and there was plenty of light so we didn't take flashlights. We went out of the woods and down a long lane that went along an open pasture between the woods and the house. We got what we needed and started to walk back. The moon was behind us over our right shoulder. We could see our shadows on the ground ahead of us from the moon.

As we were walking we saw a black circle with no lights. It just looked like a black hole in the sky. It was very low above the trees and moving towards us slowly. We all stopped (four of us) and watched it. It came over the trees and over the pasture, and then suddenly you could see a shadow moving on the ground where the moonlight was giving the thing a shadow just like us. And it went from northwest to southeast and passed over us and kept going until we couldn't see it anymore. It lasted about 2 minutes. It did not make any noise. It did not look like anything, just a perfectly round black circle. It had no lights and moonlight did not reflect off it. It made a shadow that was about the size of a house. I don't know how high it was because it had no detail but it seemed very low, like a couple of hundred feet. We told our parents the next day, but no one believed us. This was in Ohio in 1982 or 1983.

—SortOfGettingBy

The Missing Hour

Driving in the UK from a friends dinner party. We set off at around 10 p.m. for a 15-minute drive home. There was myself, my wife in the front, and my three sons in the back of the car. We were driving near a USAF base in the southeast of England along a long straight piece of road when there was an incredible flash that the wife and I noticed, and it seemed to wake up one of the elder sons in the back (he would have been about 12 at the time.) Something, I have no idea what, flew with absolute silence over the car. I saw it, my wife saw it, and the son in the back who was awakened by the flash saw it. Something flew right over us so close you could touch it and it was BIG. We got home, discussed it a bit, and concluded the flash was a flare from the USAF base and the large "object" that flew over us may well have been a Eurasian Eagle Owl (one had been spotted in this area). It was promptly forgotten…

Fast forward just over a decade, and I and the son who was woken by the flash are talking about this weird event over dinner when the youngest son (who didn't wake up during the event) tells us how he remembered it happening. He recalled an event that was vastly different than ours. He had never told this story before. He thought it was a dream until we started talking about it. He described how the car was stopped when we saw the flash. We weren't moving, and the low flying object sat on top of us for a few seconds then flew off before the car started again. Apparently, I completely ignored this stop/start and simply continued driving. Now, here's the really cool bit that we had never realized. My wife had made arrangements to call her sister when we arrived home safely. We left at around 10 p.m. for a 15-minute drive. My wife called her sister around 11:45 p.m. to say we had arrived home.

I have no idea what happened that night. I was completely sober. My youngest son insists that something very odd happened. My wife is adamant that we took approximately 90 minutes to do a 15-minute drive. Her sister backs this up. I might not know what happened that night but I am secure in the thought that SOMETHING happened

— polaris3141throwaway

The daytime shooting star

I was driving down a road in the middle of the day (there are fields on both sides), no other cars on the road. I saw what looked like a falling star, it was a big white ball of light with a tail, and it was hard to look at, even with sunglasses on. I had time to pull over and stop, still watching it fall straight down. This thing was going way faster than it should have, and so I was struggling to get my phone out of my pocket without taking my eyes off of it. Here's where it gets weird. Without warning, when it reached about eye level, it leveled off. I watched this thing go from vertical to horizontal in less than a second. It disappeared behind a line of trees and I noped out of there.

—hackerdood7

It rose out of the ocean

I used to live next to the beach in an apartment complex. One night I was with my friend looking at the ocean from the balcony. The light from the moon was enough for us to watch the waves on the shore. We saw a light on the ocean. It slowly came out of the water. What we saw was like an orb-shaped ball of light. It was so bright for a moment that I almost couldn't see the object itself. It kept going up slowly and it suddenly took off quickly into the dark sky. Everything happened in like 8 seconds. We both were freaked out and went inside the apartment. Years later I saw a report on National Geographic about orb-shaped lights flying around a forest in the USA. I knew it was the same thing I saw.

—zelater

It wasn’t a police car

This was 2012 or 2013. My ex and I were driving down a remote highway in rural west Tennessee late one night. I was in the passenger seat. It was a very open area—no trees and surrounded on both sides by flat fields. I'm looking out the window to my right and see this thing traverse the sky. It was an artificial-looking blue light. Think the color of the lights on a cop car, but a little darker. It blinked with an even rhythm 3 or 4 times. The thing that stunned me was how fast it was moving. It was low to the horizon, and it moved from the area of the horizon in front of us, to the area of the horizon behind us in about 3-5 seconds. I wasn't able to estimate size or closeness to Earth because of how fast it happened, but it was BIG. I've seen shooting stars that were close to Earth, and this was definitely not what that was. My ex saw it too and it freaked us both out.

—crushyourpretty

Need more stories about alien encounters? Check out UFO Witness on discovery+.