Written By Kari Pugh, Online Regional Reporter

2/22/2005

Frank Griffin is a firm believer in extraterrestrial life, but he didn’t like the eerie shadow he saw gliding across the sky behind his home in Owings Mills earlier this month.

The Lockheed Martin software engineer was in his backyard looking at the stars the evening of Feb. 9 when a black triangle hovering overhead caught his eye.

"It was very dark and this thing was so hard to see," he said. "But it was moving slowly, with no lights and no noise. Honestly, I didn’t feel comfortable. It was sort of scary."

Owings Mills, Md., is a densely populated suburb not far from a local airport, Andrews Air Force Base and the Patuxent Naval Air Station.

But for Griffin, who has studied aircraft since he was a child, the object didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen or heard about before.

The black triangle was at a low altitude, maybe 500 to 800 feet, with no lights, he said.

"It was so low, at first I thought it was something caught in the trees," Griffin said.

He said it looked a bit like a stealth bomber, but was "absolutely silent."

Griffin wonders if anyone else in the area saw something similar that evening. He spotted the object about 6:45 p.m. and watched its ascent across the sky for three to four minutes.

"It had only been dark maybe half an hour, 45 minutes," he said. "I wonder if it was out before dark."

Mysterious black triangles have been part of UFO folklore for years. Sightings of low-flying and silent aircraft are scattered across websites dedicated to the study of other-worldly activity.

The National Institute for Discovery Science, a group devoted to the study of unexplained phenomena, has gathered hundreds of reports from across U.S. and Canada of similar aircraft, often flying in high-population areas near major interstates.

One theory holds that the black triangles are experimental military blimps or balloons, perhaps equipped with electrokinetic propulsion systems, which would make them silent.

The military has never confirmed the existence of such balloons, but according to many UFO websites, Lockheed Martin did begin work on a triangular stealth blimp in 1982.

NIDS issued a report in August 2004 suggesting that the black triangles may be some kind of military aircraft, though the truth about them is not known.

Griffin finds solace in the fact that what he saw might have a logical explanation.

"I felt a little comforted when a buddy suggested it might be a military balloon," he said. "But I’d really like to know if anyone else spotted this thing."