Unidentified Everyday Objects and the Tank in the Sky

Three years ago I received an email from a listener about a strange sighting that she had sometime between 2010 and 2012. It involved a plane that was motionless in the sky:

“I lived in Cincinnati, OH, for 6 years and the job I had for the last 3 years had me driving all over the city and surrounding areas. I can’t remember the area where I was driving at all, but it was a two lane country road. There was a wooded area to my left, and on the right were farm fields. It must have been spring because there was very little growth in the fields. I was on a long stretch of flat road when in the distance I spotted something odd. I couldn’t tell what it was until I got closer. I saw a small airplane hovering about 40 feet above a utility pole on the right side of the road. Since airplanes don’t hover, I thought it must have been a giant balloon, maybe advertising something. I slowed down and really looked for wires or strings that were anchoring it, but it was a bright, sunny day, and there were no wires or strings. Plus, it was completely still and looked far too real. If it had been a balloon, it would have been swaying with even a little wind and could not have possibly looked that solid. I continued to slow down, trying to wrap my mind around what I was looking at. It was like this small plane was frozen in the air. I did not hear any noise and I never saw it move an inch. I wish I had stopped to take a picture, and that is something I would totally do, so I don’t know why I didn’t. I just kept driving. I continued to look at it in my rearview mirror until it was out of sight. And like I said, it was like I completely forgot about it until a few weeks ago.”

This was my introduction to Unidentified Everyday Objects, a term coined by UFO researcher David Rees to describe ordinary objects acting weirdly, such as a plane hovering in the sky, not making any noise. John Keel claimed to see a UFO transform into a plane after emerging from a cloud in The Mothman Prophecies.

This next account, though, is quite strange. An encounter with a tank in the sky?

These types of encounters are rare, but suggest a more anomalous phenomenon behind them.

There’s one other interesting note to end on: all of these stories, the one that came through email, the Keel story, and the tank story… they all occurred in Ohio.