MAYBE IT WAS A
*VITON :D
Early yesterday afternoon I picked up my mother for a Sunday lunch together. I took Normandie Avenue north to our favorite Mexican restaurant in East Hollywood. It's not the best route to take to get there, as the road is narrow for much of the drive and the traffic is often quite heavy; however, it so happens that Griffith Observatory is visible directly ahead for the whole length of the drive along Normandie, and some time ago I had seen a man painting an image of the observatory on a traffic signal control box at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard. I had been planning to photograph the painting of the observatory with the actual observatory in view in the background.
The photo below is the first of three shots taken from inside my car at the intersection while I was waiting to turn right. In it the observatory is the small white building in the distance at the left, below and to the right of the red signal light; its painted image is near the right edge of the photo, at mid-level.
Photo #1
While checking out this photo, however, I noticed something odd. Floating in the air, positioned just above the observatory, is a blurry object, round and brownish. It stood out because it's the only thing that's blurred out while everything else in the picture is in sharp focus.
Detail from Photo #1
According to the time stamp the first shot was taken at 01:02:51 PM. Seven seconds later at 01:02:58, the second shot was taken.
Photo #2
Here the object has moved westward a little. I am certain the movement is real, not a parallactic displacement caused by my car moving, as every other fixed object has stayed in the same position it occupied in the first photo. There are some tiny differences apparent in the positions of some objects, but they are so miniscule that they are almost certainly due to the movement of my hand holding the camera. Below is a detail from the second shot.
Detail from Photo #2
Below is the last of the three shots. It was taken at 01:03:07, nine seconds after the second image.
Photo #3
When I examined this photo, at first I thought the object had disappeared. But luckily -- and I mean really lucky -- I had zoomed out for a wider shot; the object is now at the top of the frame, above that white triangular piece of schmutz on the windshield. Note that the windshield wipers are in sharp focus, as are the faraway objects in the distant background. It goes without saying that if close objects are in focus and so are objects in the 'indefinitely far' distance, then all the other objects in between should be in focus as well. And so they are. Below is a blowup of the image. The mystery object is the only thing that's blurry in each shot.
Detail from Photo #3
Here it's moving away upward and eastward, seemingly at fair speed -- it actually looks as though the acceleration is causing the object to be flattened in the direction of movement, as if it were soft, perhaps not quite solid.
What could it be? It's clearly not a balloon -- a balloon does not flatten out as it gently floats away, nor does it maintain the same altitude without rising for seven seconds in calm weather while moving sideways. And anyway, a balloon (or a plastic bag, or a bird, or absolutely anything else) would not be selectively blurred out while everything else in the shot is in focus. It's also curious I didn't notice it when I took these pictures even though I was looking directly in its direction part of the time because of the observatory, although I suppose that could be due to the many distractions of the road -- or maybe it wasn't visible to the naked eye..?! (cue Twilight Zone music).
One more thing. Interestingly enough, when I posted these photos to a Facebook UFO group, the reactions were uniformly NEGATIVE. Some of the responses were actually quite hostile. Most insisted, against all evidence, that it was a balloon or some other floating debris. I have a guess as to why -- these were people who automatically assume UFOs are spacecraft piloted by aliens. That's what excites them, and when I showed them a UFO that obviously is not Close Encounters hardware, their world view was threatened. However, I myself happen to find the idea of non-spaceship UFOs much more intriguing than 'mere' spaceships.
* "Vitons" are fictional creatures that appear in the novel Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell (1939). They were conceived as floating spheres whose composition placed them outside the range of human vision, and which could telepathically control humans like cattle, while feeding off the energy of human mental emanations. Russell was strongly influenced by the writings of Charles Fort, who is credited with originating the aphorism "I think we're property".
