SIGHTING: PLAINVIEW, TX

Witness Testimony

"((NUFORC Note: Since this was a published article, we have elected to preserve the name of the witness, and not delete it. We express our gratitude to the Plainview Daily Herald for their having published the article. PD))UFO more than a glow 10-19-2006 From the Plainview Daily Herald 10/19/2006 By KEVIN LEWIS Herald Editor Mark Harmon promises he’s not crazy, despite what some of his family and friends are telling him. Harmon, a 48-year-old grain elevator operator at Providence Farm Supply, believes he had a close encounter with a UFO on Monday night outside his home in the 600 block of Wayland. “Never in my life have I seen anything like this,” Harmon said. “I really don’t know what I saw.” Harmon was in the middle of watching Monday Night Football when he stepped outside. “I stepped out in the backyard to smoke a cigarette and happened to be looking up because it was such a pretty night,” Harmon recalled. From out of nowhere, Harmon encountered lights like he had never seen before. “From the edge of the house, something came over. It was in a perfect V-shape. There were seven distinctive yellowish-white lights,” he said. “I’ve seen UFO programs where people have drawn this exact same picture.” Harmon said the lights weren’t flashing or changing colors, and “weren’t moving real fast. “Unless it was a mile wide, this thing was pretty close to the ground, maybe 1,000-2,000 feet.” Harmon said he saw the object, which was moving east, for about 4-5 seconds before it disappeared behind a tree. He hurried around the tree but never saw the lights again. “I don’t know if you had to be right under it” to see the lights or what, he said. Harmon found it especially interesting that whatever the object was did not make any noise. “The thing that got me the most was it was dead silent,” he said. “I was dumbfounded.” Harmon immediately called TV stations in Lubbock to see if they had heard of any strange object in the skies over Plainview. None had. “I was truly curious if anybody else in the area saw anything.” Harmon was supposed to call the person at KLBK back after the 10 o’clock newscast, but after telling his two teenage sons and brother-in-law about his encounter, “we got to talking about it and I never called them back.” And what did his family think about his story? “My 16-year-old (Dustin) said he had never seen me act this way about anything before,” Harmon said. “My 18-year-old (John) was kind of looking at me like these farmers have been.” Those farmers were customers at Providence Grain Supply on Tuesday morning when Harmon was telling his story to anyone who would listen. “I feel like the person on the (TV) program” trying to convince people they saw something. “These farmers are getting a kick out of it, but I know I saw something.” Harmon did a good enough job convincing his boss, Glen Graves, that he saw something. Graves did some research on the Internet and found a picture taken Oct. 16 in Croatia that Harmon said “was the same-looking deal, just a little fuzzier than what I saw.” Harmon, who moved here about a year ago from Dallas, was married to the late Lisa Daffron, a Plainview native who died July 26, 2005. “My wife used to be an (astronomy) buff. We had a couple of telescopes.” Harmon is hoping somebody else in town saw what he witnessed Monday night, if for no other reason to confirm to disbelieving friends that he, in fact, saw something up there. “I’m starting to doubt myself a little, but I know I saw something.”"