NUFORC Sighting 63968

Occurred: 2008-06-17 22:00 Local
Reported: 2008-06-17 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Osceola, IN, USA

Shape: Oval
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object

Red-Orange lighted oval with haze around it moving slowly across treetops, then speeding up, no sound.

I don’t know really what to say and I am a little bit hesitant to send anything, but I think this may be better than calling the police and asking if anybody else saw anything and then people think I‘m crazy. I live in northern Indiana in a town between South Bend and Elkhart. Although it is close to town we live in an area where there is not a lot of city light, or other things like that. The night sky is very clear and visible every evening, obviously unless it is cloudy, but anyways. My background is that I have a small computer business, married, have two little boys a degree in computer science and am an amateur pilot who flies a lot in a Cessna 172 that my father-in-law owns, so I’m not sure that I believe in UFO’s or anything like that, but I know I have never seen anything like what I saw last night.

I was outside watering flower pots at approx. 22:00, so it was completely dark. There wasn't anyone outside but me and it was completely quiet except for crickets and birds, etc. I happened to just be looking over at my neighbor’s deck which was in a south-west direction from where I was standing. I saw a reddish-orange oval float up over the top of the trees. We have many very large old trees in our area, so I am guessing the oval was between 75-100 feet off the ground because of the distance it looked to be above the treetops. It looked almost like there was a candle in the middle of it, but it did not flicker about 20-30 yards away. It hovered for a few seconds then started moving slowly to the east. It didn’t look to be that large, but I couldn’t really tell about the size of it because I wasn’t sure how close it was or its size because of the glowing kind of haze around it.

The object moved very slowly but steadily for a little ways and I thought it might be a balloon, but there was some variable light winds and it was not bouncing around at all, so I kind of dismissed that. It also seemed to be moving in too straight a direction to be a balloon, but I don’t know. It was also strange and it might be paranoia, but I was sure that when it passed over the thick area of trees behind my neighbors home (that was only about 20 yards from where I was standing) that all of the noises of crickets and bugs and birds completely stopped. You can always here the bugs and birds and other animals, day and night in our back yards because there are lots of trees and a large ravine behind our houses, so there are lots of animals, bugs, birds, etc. The object then seemed to pick up speed as it moved to the east and I could see the light and shape very clearly for a another minute or so at least. There was a full or mostly full moon in the background so the object stood out even more. It then just disappeared from view completely after that and that was the end of it.

I’m kind of confused and not sure what it was, but maybe someone else saw something or knows what it was, but it wasn’t anything I have ever seen before. Hopefully this report will help.

Posted 2008-07-05