Cube Shaped UFO - An Eye Witness Experience

It was the middle of the year 1989 in a town outside of Columbus, Ohio. I was only three years old. I saw what could only be described as an advanced extraterrestrial star ship, intensely hovering about a mile away in the sky. It was unlike anything I have ever seen since. My mom was with me and although 22 years have passed, as of 2010, we remarkably remember nearly the exact same set of details of the event. She is my only co-witness.

It was Charles Darwin who said, "A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections… a mere heart of stone." I understand the limitation of the human mind, and the possibility of hallucination or inaccurate memory and as a scientist, I take my personal experience appropriately. I have no concrete evidence, only personal belief, as I did apparently see what I saw, and so did my mother. The fact that we remember the same, means something to me. The fact that I remember this event, when I was only three years old, and no other event prior to this event in my life, suggests something real did indeed occur. I am compelled to believe, that possibly the only verifiable event that I should be expected to have remembered from this young age was the birth of my younger brother. Strangely enough, I do not have any recollection of this. I only remember the Ohio UFO. I remember the experience so vividly, that my hair stands on end as I write this. I can recall every detail - what it looked like, the intense fear running through my body, the way my mom froze stone cold. Do these feelings give the experience any sort of credibility? As a scientist, I filter them, reminded by the immense size of the galaxy, and the extremely low likelihood of even sharing our galaxy with another intelligent race, let alone an advance space traveling being. The Drake equation, by some estimates reveal that only about one or two intelligent civilizations exist in the galaxy at any given time. But, the terms in the Drake equation are difficult to estimate, meaning that could be much more common than this, or more rare.

The UFO, as I remember it, was cube shaped. I was only a child, and believe that perhaps it was some other regular solid, maybe one of the platonic solids, or maybe a modified one. But, for some reason, the cube is the way I remember it. I even drew it, the day after, on paper as being a cube. Interestingly, I always thought, if I drew it the day after, when my memory was still fresh, maybe it really did happen! Consider this, a lot of people will be aware of the fact that Star Trek's Borg Cube, would appear to be a matching description of the ship I saw. However, from my research, the first episode of Borg ships did not air on TV until 1991, however, my experience and drawing, were both done in 1989, two years prior.

Additionally, the ship I saw, or perhaps erroneously remember seeing, was lighted with an assortment of colors on each of it's six faces, appearing significantly different from the fictional Borg Cube, in Star Trek. The ship made a loud periodic pulsating wooshing sound. Perhaps to maintain it's hover, but otherwise it was completely motionless. It did not appear to be doing anything other than staying still fixed some mile or so away, but pretty low relative to the horizon.

My limited and fragmented memory, as vivid as it seems, but surely flawed (although still matching my mom's account for the most part), allows me to reveal just what happened that cold night. We were renting a house in Ohio, my dad was working there and we were from Texas. I don't know why we were awake, or where anyone else was that night, but I remember my mom very calmly but intensely telling me, "stay inside", as she walked out the door to look at something she had seen through the window. I remember following right behind her, looking up at the sky, with an incredibly unusual feeling, a feeling that I still experience in nightmares, presumably related to this event. We watched it hover there, and I asked the most obvious question, "What is that, Mommy?" "I don't know." She said.

I remember the pulsating sound, perhaps that was the part that gave me the chills most. My mom describes it as an eerie sound unlike anything she had every heard before. Anyway, after a seemingly meaningless exploration that this craft was performing, it jetted of in a diagonal streak across the sky, disappearing into a point of light. There was no sound, no acceleration, no apparent preparation, the ship just vanished at a speed none other than that of light. The only reason we even saw anything at all must have been because of the heating of the air as it traveled away so quickly. Essentially it left a plasma streak behind, like that of lighting, or a space shuttle reentry. If not for that, I doubt the departure would have been observable at all.

I remember nothing after this moment. I saw it leave, which is a good sign, meaning, hopefully, I never boarded the ship. My mom also remembers the take-off. But neither of us, remember anything after this, until the next day. This leaves an unsettling feeling deep inside me. Perhaps we were stunned by the experience or perhaps a science fiction like memory modification was performed on my mother and me.

Why the cube shape? This is probably the worst aerodynamic design possible! But, if it was in fact a star ship, it makes sense to think of other possible shapes. With essentially no drag in space, aerodynamics are meaningless. The cube shape, then, might be better explained by it's other properties. The cube is one of the only shapes which can tessellate three dimensional space. Meaning, to take up less volume, cubes can pack together, perfectly, to cram the most ships together in the smallest region. Possibly then, perhaps there was not just the one cube ship we saw, but an entire fleet, which reassembles into a larger structure once in space, before embarking on the, no doubt distant, voyage back to their home star system. However, as I suspect they must have had technology to exceed light speed, if they did in fact exist, spatial tessellation would seem of little value.

How big was it? About the height of a four story building, but also with the same width and length. I was only three, and my ability to judge size based on distance was properly not fully developed. This is, however, as accurate as I can give. It was definitely large. It wasn't the typical bright light in the sky UFO experience. I saw the form of it, from a close distance. It was a large ship.

Where they came from? I don't know. I doubt the possibility to travel to a planet like Earth, from another galaxy. Because of the difficulties and distances in space travel, I believe they might have come from a nearby star system, or perhaps from a planet within our own star system. We humans are only beginning to understand the possibilities of alternative biochemistries. The precious water and room temperature we long for, might not be so tolerable to other lifeforms. Perhaps Venus or Jupiter are more hospitable. They both provide plenty of energy and chemical diversity. I would not be surprised if life was possible in world like these.

Have I ever seen it again? No. The only update I can mention is through the advent of the internet, I was able to find another person who has a nearly identical story as mine. He described a cube shaped UFO, in the day time, hovering outside is family's farm and shooting off into the sky in a streak of light. His only witnesses were his two older brother's and his dad. I had a lengthy e-mail conversation with him several years ago, but have not heard from him since.

The experience is now only a memory. It does not fade or grow less vivid and will probably always be one of my most confusing memories. I may never know what that was, but it has definitely affected my life. My interests in space travel, life, mathematics, and physics were definitely shaped by this experience as I tried to make sense of it and understand the truth. In the end, only good has come from it, as far as I can tell.

Of course though, there is also the possibility that maybe it wasn't just my interest in them that shaped my areas of expertise in the fields of science. Maybe... they made me this way. I have, to the best of my knowledge, no tracking devices, implants, or artificial body or mind enhancements, although the metal detector does go off on me from time to time =) My mom has found metal pieces in here body before, of geometric proportions, perhaps splinters of some kind, but weird nonetheless. As to why we have no memory immediately proceeding the event of departure, I may never know.