A large illuminated cigar shaped object glides over head in front of me - no sound at all.

The date and time (mid-1970's) has blurred over the decades but my memory of the event was as clear as a crystal bell. Some of my older friends had an out door party on a dam near a spillway. They left beer cans out which I came back later to clean up.  As I was leaving I looked up to see the beautiful stars - a stillness came over me.  In shock I saw a very large cigar shaped craft glide silently  over head in front of me.  The silence was thunderous if you know what I mean. I could not believe my eyes and my brain was having a hard time trying to process the 1-4 second experience.  The speed was probably 100 miles an hour plus and moving parellel to its length as a plane would. Without good triangulation the exact size and distance of the UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) can only be estimated.  Using my eyes depth of  field I estimate the object to be around the size of a mid to large jet airliner. The shape was an absolutely perfect cylinder with domed ends (cigar). It was  slightly illuminated in the darkness and ~ a third of a mile away (45 degrees angle up). The direction was north-east. I was walking on the dam's path going south. There was no wings or other indications to assume that it was a jet or airplane.  (I had made a hard choice to give up all cigerettes, alcohol or drugs  long before that night  so you can rule out intoxication.)  That is my experience to the best of my ability and I make no claim as to what this event is or what it is not.
I beg the reader to take in but not judge either way several other experiences I have had that are more difficult to describe dealing with experiences at night  after I went to bed.  In the early 1970's (during puberty -and hormones) I do remember going to bed, starting to feel very heavy then the walls in my room would "breath" (not scary). Then I would find my self in a series of 3 absolutely hopeless hynogogic experiences.  In one I was tied across railroad tracks with a speeding train an inch from hitting me then I was balancing on a long needle that balanced on top of a radio antenna that was on top of the Empire State Building and the third experience I blocked from memory in the last few years.
(I called the 3 situations "the tourture".)  Then still in a groggy state I would walk (sometimes run) out of the house for real and go for 10 minutes.  Coming out of the groggy state I would be outside as far as a third of a mile away from my home in my underwear (much to my extreme embasasment). My mother would sometimes find me yelling-wide eyed as If I was trying to get away from someone.  I would go back inside but it would take an hour to shake off the strangness of the whole thing.  This happened in the exact pattern maybe 20 times, then after a trip to a psycholigist and 6 or so relaxer pills the experiences ended abruptly never to happen again.  Over the decades I have had  ET dreams : one human and one short elder "gray". who communicated wordlessly using either an instructional 3d image projected over my minds eye with a force of emotion that shook me to my core.  My common sense tells me that all the experiences are related but I am the first to admit that the dreams and night walks could be due to my own illusions or projections (in essence nothing to do in anyway with the cigar craft my eyes saw.) I also have no negative feelings toward ET's etc. quite the opposite.  I realize that if they are real then there is a whole range of them just like there is a whole range of humans positive and negitive.
I try to keep an open mind and my mouth shut but I continue to hear people I have become friends over the years describe their own Richmond UFO experiences.  They have no intention of reporting their own experiences and I can't blame them.  Their body language and tone displays honesty and openess.  On this issue I also have seen hypnotic eyed -very animated folks go off on cart-wheeling flights of pompas fancy. On another extreme I have seen stiff necked ultra myopic "scientific" skeptics roll their eyes in their own pious pomp.   I take both with a grain of salt.  Most people are neither extreme as they are open and are a pleasure to relate to.  I am thankful for this important web site. Thank you for taking time to read my experiences and thoughts.
Date is approximate.  We have assigned an arbitrary date, so that the report sorts to "the mid '70's."  PD