"Never in my life," she added.
But early Sunday morning [July 15], as Holmes walked out of a party at the St. Demetrius Men's Club in Carteret, she noticed a zig-zagging array of yellow lights heading southeast over a nearby oil tank farm.
Jersey's latest UFO.
"It was gorgeous. It was peaceful. It was serene," Holmes recalled Monday.
It also was hard to describe.
Holmes paused in mid-thought, then added what surely must be one of the most common sentiments of UFO witnesses everywhere.
"I really can't explain what I saw," she said. "You had to see it."
Spotting a UFO -- or what you think is one -- must be akin to winning the lottery: The magnitude is hard to fathom until you actually see something green.
But much like coming up with winning lottery numbers, UFO sightings remind us there are some things in life that just can't be easily explained.
Carteret police say they received 15 reports just after 12:30 a.m. Sunday from various residents asking about the lights passing overhead -- this on a night when the only other calls were from residents complaining of loud parties. State police say about 75 vehicles stopped on the shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike to watch.
When was the last time anyone voluntarily slowed or stopped on the turnpike?
Like Paulette Holmes, Carteret police Lt. Dan Tarrant saw the lights pass overhead. It was around 12:20 a.m. Sunday, he says.
Tarrant's 19-year-old daughter was out with her friends. She saw the lights, then phoned her father, who was off-duty and at home.
Tarrant stepped outside, looked up, and noticed the string of bright yellow lights that flashed in a V-formation for about 10 minutes, then faded one-by-one into darkness.
"We see airplanes passing overhead all the time from Newark Airport," he said. "No, these weren't airplanes."
Then what were they?
"My theory?" Tarrant said. "Debris in outer space burning."
So far, it's just a theory, of course. But that's why the light show is considered a UFO -- an Unidentified Flying Object. No one is quite sure what the lights were or why they were flashing over Carteret's 4.3 square miles of otherwise ordinary flatland between the turnpike and the Arthur Kill.
U.S. space officials say the lights were not from the orbiting space station or shuttle -- or anything else that can be explained. Likewise, officials at Newark International Airport and at area military bases say they didn't receive any reports of odd planes passing overhead or pilots seeing strange lights.
But then, if a secret military plane flew over Carteret, it wouldn't be secret if the military acknowledged it, right?
Such is the problem with UFOs: There's always room for a conspiracy theory.
Joe McManus, 22, a baker at the local ShopRite, didn't see the lights. But he insists he saw a UFO a decade ago "and it was shaped like a V" -- just like this weekend's.
James Hrehowsik, a 23-year-old U.S. Army specialist visiting Carteret from his base in Germany, didn't see the lights either. But he's quite willing to believe in spaceships. "Given the size of the universe," he said, "we're not alone."
Patty Shelton, a waitress at the Bus Stop luncheonette, agrees. "We'd have to be very conceited to think that we're the only people in the world," she said.
But for every theorist, there is someone to interject a dose of doubt. Ed Crotty, 54, makes a living looking up. He rents out searchlights for business openings.
"I don't think it was a UFO," Crotty said. "Why would they travel a million miles across space to visit Carteret?"
Good question. But then, some things can't be explained.
UFO Lights Puzzle Many New Jersey Witnesses
Paulette Holmes wants us to know that she is a completely rational 38-year-old clerk-typist who has never, ever seen a space alien.
[Original headline: E.T. comes to N.J.?]
The Record / NJ | Mike Kelly - July 17 2001
