ORAL HISTORY PROJECT -
A compilation of related and unrelated stories about alien & UFO encounters.

Story #10

Farmington Airport - Gil Strickland
April 6, 2001

I guess I can start off by saying who, what, when, where and why. My name is Gilford L. Strickland. I work as a Control Tower operator at the Four Corners Regional Airport for a company called Robinson VanBuren Associates, which is a contract control tower for the FAA. I’ve been working at the control tower since November of 1998. I have been in the business of air traffic control for 33 years and, ironically, during this time, this is the only anomaly that I’ve really not been able to identify readily.
Essentially I do not know when it was exactly, but it occurred during the middle of the summer last year (2000) on a Saturday. I was working the ground control position. A fellow by the name of Jeffrey Duetweiller was working the local control position and the controller just coming on duty was Jose Soto. We all three saw this.
Basically, it was what appeared to be an aircraft, pretty distant to the north of us. I say distant because it was shiny but it appeared to be small and I, therefore, assumed it to be an airplane to the north. We had several aircraft take off which were going that way. We called "traffic" with the altitude unknown. We began to watch this object. It appeared to be just a shiny spot, and because of its size I figured it was at least five to seven miles away from the airport, perhaps even further.
The object started moving from approximately due north, relative to the airport. All three of us were looking out the window and watching this thing. It started moving downward from its apex at approximately a 190 to 210 degree heading, coming down toward the ground. Two of us watched this with binoculars; the other one was busy moving airplanes and calling "traffic" on it. I assumed, because of its size, than when it got down to the level of the terrain that it would go behind the hills behind us. Much to my surprise it did not. In fact, I could see it outlined against the terrain to the north of Farmington (NM) which rises slightly compared to the level of the airport there.
I was watching it with binoculars and my next thought was, "Well, because it is in front of the terrain, its gotta be small." I though, perhaps, it was a baggie – a plastic baggie like you’d find at Safeway. However, there were some anomalies associated with it. The speed of its coming down toward earth was constant and I expected it to go out of sight. Much to my surprise, just before it got to the ground, it leveled off and traveled in approximately a southwesterly direction, along what appeared to be La Platta Highway, at about 300-400 feet above ground level.
By this time I could see it was not a baggie. It was spherical, it was silver in color and its speed was constant. It was slow, 15-20 miles per hour, like it was meandering, looking around. That’s the best analogy I can draw. From the time it leveled off from its descent and went laterally across the ground, again at a constant speed and a constant altitude, it followed roughly what I estimate was La Platta Highway for approximately two miles. At that time it made a right turn to the northwest, up a canyon and started slowly to gain altitude. It never varied in speed. It was really quite slow.
It came to within 200-300 feet above ground level as it slowly climbed out of the canyon it was in and continued on a northwesterly heading, climbing back to altitude. When I last saw it, it was approximately four to eight miles to the northwest of the Farmington airport, back to altitude of approximately 7,000-8,000 feet above ground level and climbing. It kept up the slow speed and I eventually lost sight of it in the haze.
The nearest I can ascertain is, because of the consistencies of it, is that it was intelligently controlled and or had a purpose. I’ve seen a lot of things in my 33 years and this was the darndest thing I have ever seen. I have no explanation for it except to say that it was definitely an unidentified object.