UFO Sightings From 1976 Over Ithaca New York

Did the nuclear reactor located at Cornell University attract UFOs in the 1970's? One person believes a UFO sighting from 1976 was the cause of it.

Have you ever heard of Mufon.com? Mufon is a website set up for “The Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity”. Each day you can find hundreds of UFO sightings from all over the nation. People can not only post daily sightings, they can post sightings from years ago and search for answers.

One listing from 1967 caught our eye from Ithaca New York:

I was a child (~10 years old) and lived in the small town of Slaterville Springs, NY, near Ithaca, NY. There was a large field on the edge of town. People began gathering on the edge of the filed and watched a UFO. The authorities were notified, apparently by those in the surrounding communities as well. We were told it was a weather balloon. May have been covered by the Ithaca Journal newspaper. "

So far your author hasn't been able to find anything from the Journal, or any where else online. The poster goes on to tell a story from 1976 around the same area:

I had a second experience in the fall of 1976. It was approx. 10:00 pm and I was driving in a VW Beetle with my baby toward Ithaca from Candor, NY. I was just coming into Danby, NY and noticed a truck broken down on the opposite side of the road. A moment later I saw a white, glowing orb that seemed to be skimming the tops of the trees on the hill before me. From a distance it looked like car headlights, but it was just above the trees, and there are no roads up there. The next thing I knew it was next to my car, traveling right next to me on the passenger side, going the same speed as the car, and had not changed in size even though it was very close. It was maybe 10-15 feet from the car. Then it just disappeared.

Both of these thing happened in close proximilty to Ithaca, NY where Cornell University is located. Although permission has been denied to build nuclear power plants there, there is a nuclear reactor at Cornell most people dont know about. I dont know if this may be the attraction for UFOs."

Is there really a nuclear reactor at Cornell? The answer is yes:

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Cornell offered a Master of Nuclear Engineering program, with graduates gaining employment in the nuclear industry. However, after the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, employment opportunities in that field dimmed and the program was dropped. Cornell continued to operate its on-campus nuclear reactor as a research facility following the close of the program."

So the poster is right in the fact a reactor was operational at the time of the sighting. Do nuclear facilities and UFO sightings go hand in hand? Yes. UFO reports come in all the time near various atomic energy locations across the world.

So the question remains.... what was following the driver one night in 1976?