NUFORC UFO Sighting 188982

Occurred: 2023-09-06 20:30 Local
Reported: 2025-04-15 15:36 Pacific
Duration: 5-10 minutes
No of observers: 2 - Military

Location: Medina, OH, USA
Location details: We were at a camp site possibly at Hall's lake.

Shape: Orb
Color: bright white
Estimated Size: impossible to judge. A sizable but distant orb.
Viewed From: Land
Direction from Viewer: South, - most probably but not 100% verified.
Angle of Elevation: 17
Heading: smaller lights moved off to the east.
Closest Distance: 6-12 miles
Estimated Speed: incredibly fast
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted other objects

One bright white orb at the horizon of which five bright lights came out of, stayed in a circle and then flew away all in one direction.

My girlfriend and I were hiking the mostly off trail Wind River high route (Dixon's High route) in the Wyoming Wind River range. We arrived in camp at Hall's lake near Medina Mountain, set up our tent, ate a quick meal and settled in to look at the south facing sky.

We then noticed an unusually bright orb in the night sky above the southern direction mountains. After a quick discussion we realized that this light was too large, too bright, and too low and unmoving in the sky to be either a star, satellite, or airplane. The orb did not exhibit any navigational lights that we could make out, nor was anything blinking on this orb. In the navy I would have reported the height in the sky of this contact as "position angle 1 or 2".
The orb was bright white, like a white LED flashlight and round in shape, if there was a shape. The distance is hard to judge but I would say it would have to have been at least six miles to the south of us, probably further. It's very difficult to say where the object would have been on a map but the rough region of Texas peak, Big Sandy or even east of the wind river range are possibilities.

As we sat observing it for a few minutes and as we increasingly realized that we were looking at something very unusual, four or five (we more or less agree on five) smaller lights came out of the main orb in a symmetrical pattern, like flower petals of a flower, and hovered a short distance away from the main orb. My girlfriend describes these smaller contacts as coming out from the main orb as "I remember 5 smaller lights coming out like a star".
We were now baffled and asked each other if the other was seeing this.

After hovering in a perfect circle and with perfect distance spacings from each other around the main orb for a few minutes, the smaller lights suddenly and all at once moved in a "daisy chain" from right to left, under and over the orb and flew off in an instant to the right (east) and were gone in the same instant. The orb remained where it was, unchanged and unmoving. There was no sound whatsoever associated with this sighting.

We sat and observed the orb for a while longer and I went into the tent as the route is exhausting in the extreme. My girlfriend later reported to me that about ten minutes after I went into the tent, one of the smaller lights returned by itself from the right (east), flew under the orb again and "reentered" the orb from the left (west).

I would like to point out for the record that I was lookout and expert lookout qualified in the US navy and spent four years and two Atlantic / Mediterranean deployments on lookout watch. I am very familiar, trained and experienced at looking watch and at identifying/reporting aerial contacts at night. The only thing I have ever seen in the sky at night that was this bright and this large were the trawling flood lights of fishing boats that were about six - ten miles away. This object was in the sky however and over the middle of a mountain range.

Neither my girlfriend nor I were in any way inebriated, although we were very tired.

Posted 2025-04-18