NUFORC Sighting 61024

Occurred: 1975-06-01 21:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2008-01-20 11:33 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 5

Location: Newnan, GA, USA

Shape: Sphere

A glowing orange circle/sphere hovered, split in half, exploded into fire, came back together and sunk back into the horizon

Date and time are estimated. It could have been any time between early 1974 through summer of 1976. Though, I believe it was a summer evening in 1975 after dark, which would make it after 9:00 PM EDT. I am estimating the time based the fact that some of the neighbors who were there moved to a different neighborhood in 1976, and I don't think I had started first grade yet, which I did in September 1975. I put it in summer, because I don't think I would have been out riding bikes in the dark during school, but it could have been spring and maybe earlier in the evening, but it was definitely after dinner. It could have been 1974, and I have seen similar reports from that year, but for some reason I think it was later.

I was out riding bikes with my brother and some neighbors in Newnan, Georgia. In the summer of 1975, I was 5 years old and my brother was 8. There were 5 or 6 of us all gathered at the end of the driveway of the kid across the street from my house. We were in a subdivision off Roscoe Road, and during the event we were facing due north. Most of the land in that direction for about a quarter mile was undeveloped forest, but there were houses on the gravel back road and pasture beyond some of the woods. Right next to my house was a clearing that at one time was going to be a short road, and the neighbor’s driveway was directly across the street from it.

What caught our eye was a huge, glowing, orangey-yellowy circle or sphere that flew in from the west and hovered near the center of that clearing, not too far over the tree line. We all stood and watched it hover for a moment, then it split in half vertically and fire shot up out of the middle. I don’t remember an actual fireball being released, just an explosion of fire. Then the two halves came back together and the sphere flew back off to the west and below the horizon. I seem to remember it went up a little before it went west and down. All the movements – appearing, disappearing, splitting, and rejoining – were calm, smooth and controlled, like gliding. From what I remember, it didn’t make any sound. I don't recall it illuminating anything. It seemed to be close, maybe ¼ to ½ mile away, but there is no way really tell how far away it was or how large. The width of the clearing was standard two-lane road length, about 20 feet, and the object appeared to take up about the same amount of space in width from our perspective. It may have been a little narrower or wider than the clearing, but not much. The entire event was brief, probably under a minute.

I haven't seen those neighbors in a long time, but my brother and I still talk about it from time to time. My sister had gone in for a minute and missed it, but she remembers us telling her about it. I have never seen any mention of it anywhere by anyone else and don't recall anything at the time. I come to sites like this occasionally to search for a description of anything similar around the same time. Not knowing where the object really was means, of course, that anyone for many, many miles could have seen it. I’ve found a few similar stories from around GA around that time, but the only one that mentions fire at all reported a fireball from a rectangle.

A couple of years ago, I met some folks in Athens, GA who knew two guys that I knew in high school in Newnan. They told me that in the mid-to-late 1980s, two of them were in one of their backyards lying on a trampoline and saw some type of event which they described as a UFO that totally freaked them out. I don't recall all the details of their experience, but I do know it was different from mine. I think they saw a line or other formation of several lights. At any rate, I got very excited when the people started to tell me about it, because I thought it may have been around the same time as my sighting. After I found out it was a good 10-13 years later and different, I still remained quite excited about it, because that particular guy lived about 2 miles north of my house in the Macedonia Road area.

Posted 2008-01-21