I had just finished my 3-11 p.m. shift at Bethlehem Steel when I ran into one of my coworkers in the parking lot with the hood up on his Chevy Impala. He asked if I could drop him off at his home, a few minutes away. I agreed, and he directed me. In a few minutes, he told me that his street was coming up on the left. A thick fog rolled up from behind us. We felt our way through the fog traveling at a speed of no more than a few miles per hour when I saw the reflection of a street sign on the left. “Where the hell is the street?”, I asked. “I don’t know, I cannot see it either," he said. "You better just stop here. If you go straight up from here, the road ends. Turn left and it will take you directly to North Point Blvd." He got out, thanked me, walked a few feet, waved, and disappeared into the fog.
I drove slowly along in the fog and came to a dead-end. At the end of the road, a large reflector made it a bit easier to gauge the turn left towards North Point. I continued to travel at no more than five files per hour, keeping my foot on the brake as the engine idled. I could make out a bridge running overhead. As I approached the bridge, I noticed an orange light. I wondered if it might be coming from an emergency vehicle, so I slowed further. Visibility was less than a car's length. As I started to pass under the bridge I heard a car pass overhead, but I couldn’t see anything but the orange light that now appeared just beyond the bridge. I slowed to a stop as I approached the end of the underpass because the light from above was so bright that it was defusing in the fog and making visibility next to zero. After coming to a stop, I moved ahead a few inches at a time with my head pressed nearly up to the windshield to see where the light was coming from.
That’s when I saw it.
Directly above me was a round object with five orange lights. The lights pulsed in unison. I didn’t know what it was that I was looking at but I was scared to death. Both of my hands were fastened to the steering wheel in a death grip and my heart was beating so hard it seemed like it might pound out of my chest. Was I seeing a UFO? I sat there for two or three minutes looking straight up through the windshield – too paralyzed with fear to move. I then noticed that the lights were not pulsing but rather, as the fog thickened and thinned out, the lights got dimmer and then brighter. Then it hit me. The object above me was a round street light mounted on the roadway above me.
I gained my composure. My heart was still pounding in my chest. And I made my way home driving most of the way at just a few miles per hour. After fifteen minutes, I got closer to Baltimore, the fog lifted and I began to think how happy I was to be headed home to get some rest.
