I walked away from a UFO that landed in my backyard when I was in elementary school

I remember waking up one night and looking out my window to see bright lights coming from my backyard. I live backed up to a wildlife refuge in a town with no sidewalks or street lights where all the houses are on 5 acres minimum, which means it’s always pitch black outside at night, so obviously this was odd. I was about to go get my dad when he came into my room saying something about a UFO. I do remember he looked kind of shellshocked/excited.

I remember being on his shoulders, going outside, and looking up at something that had landed on the front half of the aviary/flight cage we used to house wild birds we were rehabbing.

The aviary couldn’t be bigger than maybe 6ft wide, 8ft tall, maybe 20ft long (it’s not there anymore but the base is), and the UFO didn’t seem that big either. It only took up maybe a quarter of the length, and I don’t remember it being super tall. What I remember most are the rows of little square yellowish lights around the edge- they looked like they were covered with frosted glass. For a long time I remembered them as ‘glowing windows’.

As aforementioned, it was dark as fuck, so I couldn’t really see anything else. I think it had a classic rounded top though, like you think of when you think UFO, because I remember trying reeeeally hard to look there and see if there was a pilot I could see, or some kind of door. I’m pretty sure it was round, or at least had rounded edges.

Well, we got a good look at it, and then we just fucking? Went back to bed? I distinctly remember trying to stay up to watch it through my window, but it must have been really late because I did end up falling asleep.

The next morning I immediately looked to see if it was still there- obviously it wasn’t. When I tried to talk to my dad about it, the absolute liar blew me off and said it was a fallen satellite. I remember I called bullshit and asked how they retrieved it so quickly, but I don’t remember anything after that (except that I went to school and started telling everyone about the UFO I saw, which went about as well as you’d expect).

Years later I asked my dad for his version of events. I actually wrote down the conversation after the phone call ended because I was so surprised by it. I had really assumed that when I finally asked about the UFO 20 odd years later, he would fess up and say he put the whole thing together for me, since ET was practically my first word. So he either doubled down or told me the truth, idk.

I started off by asking if he remembered the UFO.

D: There was something down there, yeah. Unless there were people back there with flashlights in the woods I don’t know what it could have been.

M: Is that all you remember? I remember you taking me down to see some thing on top of the bird cage.

D: Yeah, I remember that too. There was some kind of thing up there. Twice I saw something like that out in the woods, that one and then one in the back over the [gas pipeline].

M: What was it?

D: I don’t know. I thought about it a lot.

M: You told me it was a satellite.

D: Definitely not that. But I don’t know what else it could have been.

M: Except a UFO?

D: Had to be that. Couldn’t be anything else.

That was where he terminated the conversation. My relationship with my dad isn’t the best these days and we had other things to talk about.

It just drives me crazy, as an adult, that I didn’t stay out there and watch it until it left. Or touch it or something. And wtf was my dad’s excuse? He was an adult with a functioning brain. He just went back to bed?? I allowed him to go back to bed?? I never listened to my parents. And that was the ONE night I chose to? I literally had to see a child therapist because I kept drawing pictures of me being abducted by ET with captions like ‘ET taking me away from this horrible planet’, and that was BEFORE this incident (and I don’t think I’ve ever been abducted to be clear, I was just obsessed with ET).

I’m not really sure what I want out of sharing this here. Besides the 22 other kids in my elementary school class who already had reason to think I was nuts, I’ve only really told one other person about it. I don’t like talking about it because I don’t like people thinking I’m a liar. It’s nice seeing it all written out like this though.