Recent reports of UFO sightings in McCloud have been making waves in cyberspace and spreading by word of mouth.

Dick Cary of McCloud said he saw a brightly lit flying object at about 11 p.m. the night of April 12 that hovered silently over his home just above tree top level for almost five minutes, then "quickly disappeared toward the east."

"I really don't believe in flying saucers, but I do know that something weird was happening," said Cary, an employee of the McCloud Community Services District and a lifelong McCloud resident.

He said he looked straight up with binoculars and saw what appeared to be a pulsating fire inside the hovering object.

"It looked like a giant jellyfish with a fire inside it," Cary said. "There were no canisters or anything... nothing. Just a fire inside it, and there was no noise at all."

Cary said he called his son in law and daughter who live on Broadway Ave. in McCloud and told them to go outside and look. Their first response, according to Cary, was, "Holy cow, there's something on fire."

"It looked to me as if there was something burning in the sky," said Jerome Walker, Cary's son in law. "My wife and I both saw it. There was no noise at all. It was the first time I ever saw something like that."

Walker also described the object's quick disappearance to the east.

A couple blocks away from the Cary residence, another lifelong McCloudite, Owen "Shorty" Long, said he also observed a bright light at about 11 p.m. on April 12 in the Squaw Valley Mobile Home Park.

Long said he was kicked back on the couch watching television when, "I noticed a bright light outside my window. That just didn't look right to me so I got up to investigate. It was moving real slow. No features were visible as I recall, just a triangular configuration of lights. I can't be sure of the size, it was up quite high. I remember red and yellow colors, but it seems there was another color. I can't say for sure."

Long said he went back into the house to call his son, and when he returned the light was gone.

"I found out later from the guys who live across from me, they saw something identical to what I had seen, coming from the western horizon," Long said. "This was after I went back in the house. They said it was really bright, blinked a few times, and it too disappeared. It was really exciting for me."

A dispatcher at the Mount Shasta Sheriff's Department office said to her knowledge there were no such reports made of any objects being sighted that evening.

As information was being gathered for this story, a rumor spread that the newspaper was reluctant to publish it. Then early this week numerous email messages were received at the newspaper offices from people in McCloud and elsewhere who wanted the story of the UFO sighting published. One of those e-mails came from Bozeman, MT.

Dick Cary said he first saw a bright light towards the east when he and his wife were driving home and made a right off Main St. onto Colombero.

"My wife and talked about it but we couldn't explain what we were seeing," he said. "A few minutes later when we arrived home to our residence on Shasta Avenue, I ran out to the garage and got my binoculars. It was over our house and moving slowly in the direction of Haul Road."

Suddenly, he said the light "took off real fast in a big curve in a north-easterly direction, going high into the sky and just disappeared. My wife and I were in awe at what we had just seen."

Cary said after his wife went back inside the house, he noticed another light coming from the direction of Hoo Hoo Park.

He said the object, which he estimated at about 10 feet in diameter, stopped right over the top of his house.

After remaining above his house for several minutes, Cary said it moved in the direction of Haul Road, hovered a few minutes and appeared to take the same north easterly path as the other light and disappeared.

"It was unbelievable," he said. "If it had come down, it would come down right on top of our house. My wife was never a believer in anything like that... she is now. She didn't sleep at all that night."