NUFORC Sighting 04144

Occurred: 1974-07-16 01:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 1998-06-29 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 3-5minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Left a trail

It was about 1AM-2AM in the morning, while watching TV, a bright object though our window caught my eye. The window was on the north side of the house. It was decending at approximately 45 degrees angle east to west, it was huge and around the circumference was seeming low flames with a fiery trail. It reminded me of the huge special effects of the meteor that carried the space craft in the original "War of the Worlds" movie. It was eerie looking, I was so excited I shouted for my wife to come a see. By the time she awoke and got to the window it passed from sight. I called the Ft. Lauderdale International Airport Control Tower and asked if they saw the object. The person that answered said "No". I the called Channel 7 news room and a guy answered, I told him what I saw, he replied that he had not heard of anything. I asked him if he did would he call me back and I gave him my telephone number. I thought he was just humoring me when he said he would, but when the phone rang about 15 minutes later it was this fellow at the TV station telling me that the report was coming over the AP wire and that the object had been spotted as far north as Gainsville. He asked me to descibe what I saw again, I did, he thanked me and we hung up. I could hardly sleep and stayed up most of the night. The next day I was impatiently waiting for the news reports to come out about the sighting, but I personally never heard anything about it. Someone said something about a falling satelite or some other nonsense. That vision will never leave me. This evening I discovered your Reporting center and curiosity drove me to find the report which had to be one in the sighting. I was stunned to finally see a report by someone else that seemingly corroborates what I saw. That report was posted 6/2/98 and the location was Hamton, Virginia Beach Amusment Park, VA. The report by a photgrapher. I've waited 28 years to tell this, boy it feels good! Thanks.

Round meteor with flame and trail, decending as if it were a controlled decent. The color was Orange/red and bright. It did not move like a falling star or a burning up satellite or a meteor burning up in our atmosphere. It was too huge and too controlled.

Posted 1999-01-28