Carey Hicks was standing in his driveway in Vancouver’s Fruit Valley neighborhood Wednesday night when he saw something odd and scary streak through the sky.
It was a helicopter chasing a small craft, possibly an orb, that was highly maneuverable, he said.
“It was a smaller craft with a large military helicopter following it,” Hicks said. “It flew over two or three times.”
He said he saw the craft, which he described as a ball of light, fly over his neighborhood toward Vancouver Lake at about 10 p.m. or 10:30 p.m.
Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said there were some military exercises on Wednesday night for the Oregon National Guard, but they involved F-15s and not helicopters, as far as he knows.
“We have no reports of any UFOs,” Kenitzer said. “But there has been some military activity.”
Kama Simonds, a spokeswoman for the Port of Portland, said the port was working on emergency preparedness drills Thursday, but there was nothing happening at the Port at the time Hicks said the incident happened.
“It had nothing to do with the drill,” Simonds said.
So far, there are also no reports listed on the National UFO Reporting Center website, www.nuforc.org, but the site hasn’t been updated since May 9, said Peter Davenport, the center’s director. He is away from the center this week but said he will update the site when he returns.
Such sightings aren’t uncommon, he said.
“I can’t tell you how many similar reports I’ve had of aircraft chasing anomalous objects,” he said.
Some Columbian readers also reported seeing what appeared to be a pair of Apache helicopters at the same spot, Hicks noted, but as of late Thursday none said they saw the aircraft chasing an orb.
“I heard the helicopter noise last night, just got into bed in the Lakeshore neighborhood,” reader Tom Heller said in an email. “It sounded maybe like a military Apache but not like the Coast Guard Sikorsky helicopters. It seemed to be loud and then quiet, like it was a maneuver. I assumed it was a rescue of some kind or a military exercise from the Portland air base.”
Other readers suggested the object could have been a drone.
Hicks said he just wants to know more about the incident.
“You could just really hear the rumbling of the helicopter,” Hicks said. “It was freaky. It was scary. It made your heart pound.”
He said he has no idea what the object, which looked a bit like a star, was.
“I don’t want to say aliens,” Hicks said. “It could be something from another country. But they were chasing something and they were following it around. It was outmaneuvering the helicopter pretty good. The light would just shut off, then come back on around the other side of it.”
He said his neighbor and his neighbor’s daughter saw it as well.
The object was about 500 feet off the ground, he added.
“There was definitely something about it,” Hicks said.
