It was a big family party late at night in Buena Park, in the Los Angeles and Orange County sprawl. The kids were bouncing in an inflatable jumper out front, and the adults were singing in the backyard. A long driveway ran down the side of the house to the garage, so the front gate was in plain view of everyone at the back.
For no particular reason, one of the kids wandered over to stand by the front gate and looked straight up. Hanging over the party was a disc, exactly like a classic film flying saucer, spinning, with a ring of lights around its edge. After a few seconds it shot away to the north-north-east.
Our witness looked down to the left and saw a sister staring up too. "Did you see that?" She nodded. But the other kids were still playing, and nobody at the back had reacted at all. The two siblings went round asking whether anyone else had seen it. Their mum put it down to overactive imaginations, and the pair, who loved making up stories, soon turned it into a game about a Disney ride you could sit inside.
Years later, as an adult, our witness asked the sister about it. Her eyes widened. She remembered looking up, the disc, realising no one else had noticed, and the story they made up afterwards. The only detail she doesn't remember is it zooming away.
The witness weighs evidence carefully, takes eyewitness testimony seriously, and is the first to admit how odd it is that, in a crowded yard in one of the busiest parts of Southern California, apparently nobody else saw it. The search for an explanation goes on, but the memory isn't hazy like a dream. It feels like any other real memory from childhood.
