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"Close" Encounters - Falls Church Edition Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

Aliengirl: Unfortunately the construction for the pedestrian bridge will have this one out of commission for a while. There are a few other potential locations in the Falls Church area with a related story so another encounter may be forthcoming.

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Hidden : 8/30/2016
Difficulty:
3.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

When I have too much time on my hands, I (like many other people) turn to the internet. Somehow I stumbled across MUFON and NUFORC records and thought it would be an interesting idea to do a series of mystery caches based on UFO sightings in the area. Recently I was directed to an interactive map that displays the locations of ufo sightings (which then links to the MUFON and NUFORC reports) - much more interesting than just reading reports :)


The Incident

This incident, which took place on April 14, 2011, had two people in two different locations submit reports.

Witness #1: "... around 2 AM... I was awakened by the sound of military jets flying over my home. I live right on the Arlington/Falls Church border, about 10 minutes from DC and the Pentagon, so I am very familiar with the sound differences between commercial and military planes. I looked out the window and saw a bluish/white light flash, several times, in different positions each time. It was a cloudy night and each time the light flashed, it lit up the cloud cover near it. I heard the jets clearly, as they were quite loud, but did not see them, probably due to the cloud cover. I have never seen an object flash the way this one had, or move positions so quickly (and none of the positions were linear). I do believe there was a ufo over the skys of Falls Church that night, and military jets where deployed to intercept.

Based on the map, the witness lived in Arlington on 25th Street N, behind Charles A. Stewart Park.

Witness #2: Late last night (on or about 3:08 a.m., 04/14/11) I stepped outside for a smoke. All of a sudden I heard an increasing in volume thunderous roar, approaching from the north-west. This made me look up. It sounded like military jet with the pilots really pushing the pedal to the metal. I did not see the jets, but it sounded like the ones I saw flying over Andrews Airforce base in Maryland... These jets seemed to be flying pretty low and I have never seen or heard them flying over at this time of night - never. I looked up to see what is making all that noise, but did not see the jets.

However, panning the skies from west to south, I saw what looked like a very bright large star, crossing the sky from west to south in the south-western quadrant of the sky. It had the same bluish-white tint to it that the stars do. The line of sight was at about 30 degrees angle to the ground. I could not judge the distance and did not see any shape that might have been associated with the object, but it crossed the sky in under 10 seconds and disappeared behind the trees I have to the south of my house. The strangest thing about the object was that it was blinking in a very peculiar manner. Commercial jets have red and green light, blinking continuously without interruption. This thing was bluish-white, would blink 3 times within approximately 1 second, then would stop blinking all together for a second, then blink 3 times within approximately 1 second again, then stop blinking for a second, etc., during the whole 10 seconds or so it took it to cross the visible to me south west quadrant of the sky. These was no noise at all coming from the UFO directing - the roar I heard was rapidly approaching from the north - west. As I said before, the UFO disappeared behind the trees in about 10 seconds, but I kept hearing the roar for another 5 minutes or so. Sounded like the jets kept flying around. Then everything went silent. Half an hour later the roar came back, but I was already in bed and did not run outside to see what was going on. It would not do any good anyhow, since the speed with which the object moves - it would have been gone by the time I got out.

I came to work and had to tell someone what I saw. I told the story to a security guard that I am friendly with and he said that he lives right near Andrews Airforce Base and he heard they scrambled jets several times last night, which, according to him, they never do at night. He thought someone might have flown into Washington DC no-fly zone or something. This confirms my suspicions that the roar I heard was military jets. The object could not have been a satellite. I have seen those and they do not blink, do not fly at 30 degrees angle above the horizon and do not get chased by the military jets because the jets cannot fly that high.

Based on the map, this witness lived in Falls Church, near the intersection of Maple and Great Falls.

The Cache

The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates. Instead, the coordinates will lead you to mail box where the following clues were found.

Inside this envelope, obviously addressed to the pilots at Andrews Air Force Base, was a single piece of paper vaguely showing the cache location.

The "other" stuff

Once you reach GZ you're looking for a magnetic nano in a fairly common cache location. This cache has been placed with permission.

You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.

Once you decode the puzzle, the answer will be in the following format: Nxx xx.xxxx Wxx xx.xxxx; however, GeoChecker only allows three digits after the decimal. Drop the last digit for both parts of the coordinates to get the green check mark on the GeoChecker.

Additional Hints (No hints available.)