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 On March 13,2001 at 6:20 PM, as I was driving home from work just before dusk and topped a hill facing west I saw a white something dropping fast from high in the sky in the west. At first I thought it dropped straight down but after consulting a map that showed my route veered slightly north I realize the craft did also. At first it was a shape like a flat bottomed cone (tall popcorn bucket/elongated thimble, maybe) with larger part at the top. It had very sharp edges visible and at times while dropping there was an indication of a fold or line the length of it from top to bottom (as if rotation presented different view to me). It was very bright white against the palest blue sky. As the highway I was on turned north, I took a side road to the west heading toward the still dropping object, in the hope of keeping it in sight and getting a better look. I wondered where it might land assuming it was very large space debris, perhaps even from Mir that might be breaking up already. After I stopped my car, I watched it drop to just above the top of tree line about 75 feet ahead of me. At that time while I remained stationary, the object seemed to hesitate and the bottom lifted, pointing north. It moved across the sky (18" at extended arm length) to the north and appeared to stop. There was no sound, scents or other noted effects. I watched a few moments as it seemed to just stay suspended there. This discounted my idea of space debris and I assumed I would be able to check NASA sites to discover what it was. It didn't seem to be in danger of crashing. I turned and went back out to the highway heading north and when I cleared line of woods to my left I saw what I believe to be the same object that had traveled a bit further north than I had. (as it was out of my sight for a period, I can not be absolutely positive it was the same object.) I parked my car across from cleared pasture area (less than 1/2 mile north of first stop) to take more pictures. The object was then seen as a rather vertical jelly bean (cigar) shaped bright yellow "glow" sitting barely above tree line in the west less than a quarter mile away. I took another picture and as I watched it seemed to ignite as if exploding and began to ascend. At this point I feel sure it was on fire. The top (front?) blazing was bulged out like smashed ice cream cone as it seemed to meet resistance. The back tapered only gradually. This was intense fiery orange, black, yellow, red colors. As it rose, I looked to two guys a hundred feet north on the highway working on their truck and realized they hadn't noticed it. I pulled my car up and just said look. On of these guys immediately said, "That's it! That's that space station." We watched it turn back overhead toward the east and discussed things we knew about Mir coming down for a couple of minutes before the object appeared to burn out. At that time it continued overhead east as a pattern of black debris in various geometric shapes from front to length of previous burning tail. Still all this time no sound or odor of fire. Help had come for the stalled truck and I needed to move my car so I went on toward home. I was assuming there would be an explanation all over the news. After about 3 miles I turned on a highway headed east and looked back with clear view of the burn-up area and could see nothing. There were no images of the object in my pictures? Only the treeline! And needless to say, nothing on the news to explain it! For two weeks, at least, military planes cruised the tree tops here. They didn't ask me where to find it (I say that because the next day I wrote a full description of event with longitude and latitude, pictures showed where object should have shown up in them for approximating distance from me by angles or whatever, all to a NASA contact. I was assured by him he checked around and it was not a "space object".)
Originally published in Project X Newsletter #61
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