Thanks for going against the HN grain and submitting a description of this experience. For a site with so many well-educated users I am disturbed by the volume of comments that suggest that things like this only happen in the US, or they have only happened since WWII, they are only reported by military pilots, or that this can't be real because FTL travel is not possible without considering that it isn't even necessary nor has it ever been claimed in any account AFAIK. I first started reading about things like this decades ago (after Pascagoula) and over the years I have read a lot of reports filed with outfits like MUFON. I am open-minded about all this and willing to consider that some of it could be true. Personally I tend to believe older reports filed by people who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by making an extraordinary claim yet still chose to inform their peers about something that they saw or experienced because they needed to understand it themselves and if they told the story maybe someone somewhere could fill in the blanks for them.

Someone that I have known for decades told me a few years ago that they were part of a small group that had an experience with something similar to what you are describing. In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual. These are college educated people enjoying life in a rural area.

While in college, I also taped a story that a fellow student told one day. I always taped the lectures and transcribed them after class to help remember things and on this particular day the subject somehow turned to UFOs. I would have to replay the tape to know how the segue happened but anyway, if I remember right the professor commented about UFOs not being real and this student interrupted and told his personal encounter story. From memory, he was out with friends riding ranch roads across the part of west Texas where he was raised when one of them pointed out a set of lights over a part of the ranch where there were no roads, buildings, etc. They all saw the lights and decided to investigate and so they followed ranch roads towards them and as they got closer it was apparent that the lights were part of something really unusual and large that was not on the ground but was in the sky. As they got closer it zipped straight up and away and was gone in a couple seconds. I still have the tape but no way to play it. I always recorded over the previous day's lecture after transcribing but for that one I decided I would keep it and start another tape. I know this person to be an ordinary person who got a great education in geoscience and took that into a career with a multinational company eventually as a VP. He was always a no bullshit person.