This happened in May of 1996. I was working for the county road crew at the time, doing asphalt repair. We'd do the work in the evenings, you know, after rush hour died down. Less traffic to deal with. Made the job easier. This particular night I was assigned to Route 9, about three miles outside of Millfield. Solo job. Just me, the truck, and a bunch of potholes that needed filling. My partner had called in sick that morning. I didn't mind working alone. I'd been doing this kind of work for maybe eight years by then, so I had the routine down. It was a Tuesday, I think. Or Wednesday. One of those middle-of-the-week nights where everything's quiet. Weather was decent. Not too hot, not too cold. Perfect conditions for the asphalt to set properly.
I got started around 7:30, maybe quarter to eight. Sun was getting low but there was still plenty of light. I had the work truck parked on the shoulder with the flashers going, cones set up. Standard safety protocol. The stretch I was working was pretty straight, maybe a mile of road with good visibility in both directions. I always kept my Nikon in the truck for documenting road conditions, you know, before and after shots for the county. I was maybe twenty minutes into the job when I first noticed it. I'd just finished filling this one pothole, was walking back to the truck to get more asphalt mix, and I saw this light. Way off to the east, coming from over the treeline. At first I figured it was a plane. We get a fair amount of air traffic in that area, small planes mostly, heading to the regional airport. But then I realized it wasn't moving like a plane. It was just hovering there, maybe a thousand feet up. Just this bright sphere, like an orb. Perfectly round. The color was hard to describe. Kind of orange-white, but it wasn't like a streetlight or anything artificial I'd seen before. It had this quality to it, you know? Like it was generating its own light, not reflecting it.
I stood there watching it for maybe thirty seconds, trying to figure out what I was looking at. That's when it started moving. Not fast at first. Just drifting, real smooth, heading in my direction. No sound at all. That's what got my attention right away. A plane, a helicopter, anything conventional, you'd hear the engines. This thing was completely silent. It kept coming closer, and I could see it was bigger than I'd thought. Maybe the size of a small car, based on how it looked against the trees. Still perfectly spherical. The light it gave off wasn't harsh, wasn't blinding. It was steady, consistent. Like someone had put a dimmer switch right in the middle setting and left it there. I should mention, there were a couple of cars that passed while this was happening. I remember one of them slowed down a bit, probably wondering what I was staring at. But they didn't stop. Just kept going. I don't know if they saw it or not.
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