NUFORC Sighting 129592

Occurred: 2016-08-20 23:00 Local
Reported: 2016-08-30 15:41 Pacific
Duration: 30 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Changed Colo

My wife and I were in Chicago and we witnessed 8 orange/red/bright spheres slowly going overhead. I am ex Navy and stationed on the USS Midway back in te mid 80's. I worked on the flight deck identifying aircraft so they could set the arresting gear for the correct plane landing (I know my aircraft) - you use the color and shape of the pylons on the aircraft to identify it. This was way slower and way lower than a regular plane would fly. It was much smaller too. Perhaps 800 - 100 ft up and maybe 20' - 25' long. Listen, they were on a flight pattern almost right above, not in complete uniform but close. The 3rd or 4th one was right overhead in fact my wife grabbed my arm as I joked that if these are real UFO's one might beam me up and she was deathly afraid that it might. I got to see inside it pretty well. It looked to me like the outside was opaque (see thru) down the middle inside was a dark (spine or pencil) running the length of it. Imagine the top 3rd of a Christmas tree looked like the propulsion as it was glowing, mainly orange, red. It looked like it was on file but a controlled fire that never got out of control. Heck, I did a lot of research and many say it's those Chinese lanterns. No, waaaay to big and at the end. First 3 or 4 came, than the other 4 about 5 -7 minutes later. There was also the 9th UFO? that stayed out a distance that never came to close to recognize the color or shape. You see, I like fairly close to O'Hare and the flight pattern is pretty similar location and we were seeing lights and after a while they would get closer and you could make them out but the 9th UFO? never got too close or on the flight pattern of the regular aircraft. It was close, I mean close enough and closer than the videos I see on you tube for me to see inside and make it out really well. Funny thing was it was a rather calming experience. I mean if you were to tell me that I would see a UFO I would normally be afraid and here I was looking at what I think were UFO's and I wasn't scared. Like I said I went underneath and said "go ahead and beam me up!" I just never felt that it was threat to us. I believe it was unmanned? Not sure if unmanned is right word there? Anyway, I believe it was just gathering information.

((ADDENDUM FROM SOURCE OF REPORT))

Hi Peter,

Not many clouds in the sky as it was pretty clear on 8/20/16 in Chicago. The altitude of the few clouds were at least twice that of the ufo's. I don't know how to triangulate altitude but I do know from just checking google images of pictures from 1000' altitude that that is really close to the height (perhaps less and 800' is probably closer). Our location seeing this was Hermosa Park. If you do a quick google or view of the park we were in the field between the baseball field and the playground. The formation came from the baseball field to the playground which is from West to East (Lake Michigan is due East).

I just wish like a computer my memory from this event could be accessed so you could see what I saw.. I did some research after seeing this (after checking to see if I could find other reports about this particular incident) and found this to be the closest thing to what I saw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc2ppoJIexY. The only difference was my vantage point. We were probably 3 times closer than his view, right underneath the flight pattern.

Crazy thing to me was after researching the internet was seeing so many reports of similar sightings. I would've just brushed these people away myself before this happened as I'm a see it to believe it kind of person but I can tell you I'm a believer now!

I really not sure how to contact the local press about something like this but myself or my wife are not afraid to say what we saw. We are very straightforward people with no agenda so if I'm contacted I will talk but I'm probably not going to seek out any press myself.

I'm willing to continue any dialog about this Peter, as I'm still so curious as to what this was?! Let me know any thoughts or if you have a similar report from others. This happened in Chicago on a Saturday night in the summer in a busy area!!! Someone saw something that we did I can tell you that.

Sincerely,

((name deleted))

((END ADDENDUM))

Posted 2016-09-02