NUFORC Sighting 02056

Occurred: 1997-03-11 18:30 Local
Reported: 1997-03-12 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 15 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Charleston, WV, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Left a trail, Aircraft nearby

Summary : 3 bright, orange objects with comet-like tails, moving toward earth, then toward each other, then horizontally, east to s.west

My 9 year old daughter and I were in the car and both saw an orange, bright object which appeared to be falling to earth. It had a tail above it.

Then 2 other objects appeared moving toward the first one. They all had vapor trails, or tails.

Then, they all three changed course, moving together horizontal to the earth, from our left to right. They stopped at one point and appeared to hang in the sky.

We had parked the car to look and I measured one of the objects against a tree limb, and it did not move for some minutes.

Gradually, they grew smaller as they moved away, but the orange color was clearly visible until they disappeared behind a mountain.

The conditions: it was aclear evening, at sunset. The moon was visiblea bove the objects in the sky. No rain, or clouds at all, but no stars were yet visible.

It grew completely dark in the time we watched them.

I am a lawyer and my daughter is in 4th grade. Neither of us has ever seen anything similar to this before.

Interestingly,by the time we reached our home, 4 military planes from the National Guard flew over usheading southwest, which is the direction the three objects had been heading.

Posted 1998-03-07