Fire in the sky - The Orange UFO Mystery

reply to post by ninetysixufo


haha yea you are telling me.... what better way can you make yourself look crazy than to tell somebody you were thinking about a ufo that you had seen, and then that same one (or one just like it) appears.... at that point, basically anybody i told other than people that have seen what i saw, thought i was in need for a visit to the funny farm.

reply to post by Scamzarilla


Definitely best to keep quiet about such happenings. I will never again report such a sighting to UFO researchers either. The day after I reported my first sighting in 1996 it was all over the local radio. Although there were several of us who saw the orange object, we were ridiculed.

It's something I will remember for the rest of my life, but unless I'm posting semi-anonymously on the internet, I keep the stories to myself.

Originally posted by nottelling
reply to post by Scamzarilla

 

Definitely best to keep quiet about such happenings. I will never again report such a sighting to UFO researchers either. The day after I reported my first sighting in 1996 it was all over the local radio. Although there were several of us who saw the orange object, we were ridiculed.

It's something I will remember for the rest of my life, but unless I'm posting semi-anonymously on the internet, I keep the stories to myself.

I can understand. It's a shame in today's world that people ridicule such things.

Something that bothers me is that I read a lot of testimonials that claim "there is no way the orange lights I saw were lanterns or balloons". But whenever someone manages to capture these things on video, they always seem to be able to pass for lanterns or balloons.


It might have been six or seven years ago now that they stopped showing up over my town. Sometimes the local radio stations or newspapers would have a blurb about the "mysterious lights". For at least two years, and nearly every single night, orange lights would appear over my town, sometimes singly, and sometimes in groups. When they did appear in groups they often seemed to move in a way, it seemed to me, that suggested that they might be physically attached to each other, though they were separated by a significant angular distance in the sky. Their movement varied on different nights. Sometimes they appeared to hover, and other times they appeared to move quite swiftly. Sometimes their movement was smooth and other times it was erratic. They were always silent. As for their appearance, they seemed to range in color from muted yellow, to bright red, and their apparent size ranged from a pinpoint, such as a star, to something that more resembled a planet or a small moon. Sometimes they shone as a solid light, sometimes they appeared to pulse, and other times to flicker. Occasionally they could be seen to flash, a brilliant whitish-blue. What really impressed some witnesses, was when they appeared to drop, or birth, smaller luminous objects that would fall toward the earth.

After some time, if they hadn't drifted out of view, they would always vanish without a trace.

Except on one occasion! On one occasion one of the orbs descended from the sky. And just before I watched that one crash into a swamp, into a spot no more than 50 feet from where I was standing, I could see the thing clearly for the first time. There was no doubt about it, the mysterious orbs over my city were definitely some kind of lantern or balloon. Who knows what motivated someone to release them almost nightly and for two years at the least?

I had already reached the conclusion that they were probably balloons after having seen them in the skies on many occasions. If I had seen them only once or twice, I don't know what I would have made of them. Their particular qualities on those particular nights, might have seemed very much outside of the characteristics of balloons or lanterns. At least as far as I had known those characteristics to be.

reply to post by Tearman


Well, there are many situations where a sighting was 'no way lanterns or balloons', and indeed, the 'Chinese lantern' explanation seems to have become the explanation of choice for many de-bunkers. But Chinese lanterns are a very simple, earthly object, and therefore cannot display amazing flight characteristics and always fulfill a very predictable type of sighting.

The only reason they have entered the field of ufology is through peoples lack of familiarity with them, but once you have seen a few of them, they could not be mistaken for anything else.

One or more white, orange to red points of light drifting slowly upwards and / or horizontally for no longer than a few minutes? There is a very good chance you are viewing a Chinese lantern. Object moves quickly, changes direction suddenly, changes colour, is visible for more than a few minutes? Probably not a Chinese lantern. Large object or multiple objects moving different directions? Probably not a Chinese lantern. Object seen to appear high up or displays any movement that couldnt be the wind? Probably not a Chinese lantern. This doesnt mean you are viewing a flying saucer, but you probably arent looking at a Chinese lantern either.

They are simply a candle in a paper tube, and therefore cannot do anything remotely unusual. They might trick the average person for a few seconds or minutes, but the average human should be able to identify them!!!

I suppose my point was... are the sightings actually very remarkable? Or is it people's inexperience or propensity to become excited that makes them remarkable? They seem awfully exciting when a person recounts the story. So how come the video evidence is never as remarkable?

So you see things going in different directions supposedly against the wind, that sounds pretty remarkable right? Well, the wind doesn't go in the same direction or at the same speed at different parts of the sky. Also, both the direction and speed of wind at any point in the sky can change suddenly. So when I see orbs moving in different directions, or changing direction suddenly it isn't very remarkable to me.

So you see lights that change colors? Remarkable? Or is it a pyrotechnic display? Is it a part of the balloon that is differently colored and therefore lets through different colors of light? When I see orbs changing colors it isn't very remarkable to me.

When I first started seeing lights over my town, I thought they were pretty remarkable. They made maneuvers and exhibited other characteristics which I was not accustomed to seeing. Suppose I had never seen one of the orbs crash near me? If it hadn't, I still wouldn't be able to say that the maneuvers and such that I saw were normal for Chinese lanterns.

reply to post by Tearman


Are you struggling to admit something unknown might be in the universe/sky? A nice skeptical post, but it's far too general and to state that those occurrences are "not very remarkable" to you is pretty pointless, considering how many sightings there are of varying degrees of intensity. Maybe you have a particularly dull mind and even if you did see something that indicated intelligence you would not take it to heart? You havn't witnessed something conclusive, whereas other people have seen things that are completely crazy and leave no doubt of some type of intelligently controlled vehicle that displays characteristics that don't match anything of Earth.

the fireball airships are for real
i have seen many
they can have many colors, mostly just yellow white or pure white
just my 1 cents of information from the other side of the planet

I've seen these types of videos all over the web. I could imagine how people in my hometown (NYC) would feel seeing that in the sky above them... PANIC

reply to post by BM1092


imagine then to have seen 100+ of them as a hobby....
he he i could scare the # out of anybody but they do not believe a word so i don't
but it started to get scare when they started to dodge across the sky and then come down from space to very near me (its hard to tell how high) in just like 5 sec..
after the forth time of them coming down and a few encounters of very close range dodging and even one time color changing moving big lights
i sort of quited my hunting
this is a good sport but you need some friends, on your own its hot

Originally posted by WorShip
reply to post by Tearman

 

Are you struggling to admit something unknown might be in the universe/sky? A nice skeptical post, but it's far too general and to state that those occurrences are "not very remarkable" to you is pretty pointless, considering how many sightings there are of varying degrees of intensity. Maybe you have a particularly dull mind and even if you did see something that indicated intelligence you would not take it to heart? You havn't witnessed something conclusive, whereas other people have seen things that are completely crazy and leave no doubt of some type of intelligently controlled vehicle that displays characteristics that don't match anything of Earth.

Sure a lot of people see something completely crazy that leaves no doubt in their mind. But when they manage to get the thing on video, suddenly it doesn't seem to be such a clear cut case of craft under intelligent control. What is to account for the discrepancy? I've seen things that were remarkable to me. Some things I still cannot explain. But I have carried away one important lesson from these events, it is easy to fool oneself.. You don't notice when you're doing it.

reply to post by BM1092


im originally from middletown, about an hour north of ya.... theres a town right near it called Pine Bush, for a while it was the ufo sighting capital of NY, my uncle has told me some weird stories from the area... also when i lived in brooklyn i barely ever seen even the stars in the sky cuz of too many lights around haha... but up here in vermont, things are a little different up here... more feilds and open space, backwoods areas... i live in the city of st albans which is one of the more up to date cities in vermont, nowhere near as big as any part of nyc, but ive seen quite a few sightings in this town alone! i am smart and rational enough to realize when something is a helicopter or a plane due to the noise they emit, sattelites travel higher than how high my sightings were, was faster than a blimp or a lantern and the light was just...different...

Originally posted by Tearman

Originally posted by WorShip
reply to post by Tearman

 

Are you struggling to admit something unknown might be in the universe/sky? A nice skeptical post, but it's far too general and to state that those occurrences are "not very remarkable" to you is pretty pointless, considering how many sightings there are of varying degrees of intensity. Maybe you have a particularly dull mind and even if you did see something that indicated intelligence you would not take it to heart? You havn't witnessed something conclusive, whereas other people have seen things that are completely crazy and leave no doubt of some type of intelligently controlled vehicle that displays characteristics that don't match anything of Earth.

Sure a lot of people see something completely crazy that leaves no doubt in their mind. But when they manage to get the thing on video, suddenly it doesn't seem to be such a clear cut case of craft under intelligent control. What is to account for the discrepancy? I've seen things that were remarkable to me. Some things I still cannot explain. But I have carried away one important lesson from these events, it is easy to fool oneself.. You don't notice when you're doing it.

edit on 22-11-2012 by Tearman because: (no reason given)

Majority of sightings are not filmed. I'm not sure why most videos are fairly tame. Nothing really conclusive, I agree. But there are many accounts of amazing things. I would be skeptical as well if I hadn't witnessed something myself.

reply to post by ninetysixufo


Interesting thank you for this share.

FK

reply to post by Tearman


Have you ever considered that most of the sightings in your area might indeed have been remarkable, and you just happened to see a Chinese lantern, and jumped to the conclusion that all the sightings 'must have been' one? Maybe a hoax done for the very reason that there were all these unusual sightings? Difficult to prove either way....

I agree with you on this- sightings of Chinese lanterns are not remarkable in any way, and can be identified very easily- this is why I have such a problem with people jumping to that conclusion without looking at the evidence.

awesome to read about these orange ufo balls.

While living in Plymouth a few years agao me and my partner were walking to the cinema for a late night showing, i always tend to look to the skies as much as possible. i felt something and looked back to see a orange glowing ball floating along slowly, no sound at all and came right towards us then it just went off faster into the distance. My girlfriend had never seen a ufo before, i believe that was her 1st experience, she was a little scared but excited once it had left us. there does seem to be a larger witness account for these orange balls recently.

Originally posted by Thunda
reply to post by Tearman

 

Have you ever considered that most of the sightings in your area might indeed have been remarkable, and you just happened to see a Chinese lantern, and jumped to the conclusion that all the sightings 'must have been' one?

Of course I considered that. But the more I learned about perception, about human visual acuity, our ability to estimate distance to objects, their size, and speed, etc... and especially how becoming very excited about a sighting can change the way you remember perceiving it... the more I realized that there was nothing remarkable about the original sightings to begin with. Keep in mind I had been watching these things off and on for nearly 2 years. I must have seen them 50 times or more.

Originally posted by WorShip

Majority of sightings are not filmed. I'm not sure why most videos are fairly tame.

I have a theory on that. I think the reason the video evidence doesn't match up with witness testimony is because the witness accounts we read are ones where people get so excited that it interferes with their ability to perceive or remember the event accurately. They draw a conclusion that what they are experiencing is paranormal, and then interpret evidence in a way that supports that conclusion. Obviously this doesn't cover 100% of sightings, but I'd say a huge proportion of the accounts that we read on the internet. One problem is we never hear from the people who say "yeah, I saw it, and it was just a balloon." Because they don't bother to tell their story.

I would be skeptical as well if I hadn't witnessed something myself.

I've witnessed something myself and I am still skeptical. Which is the reason I am skeptical of other people's accounts as well.

reply to post by Tearman


Your theory is worthless because you havn't witnessed even 0.000001 of all the sightings. And an equally small percentage of those are caught on video! Such a terrible generalisation. "People get excited". Why did they get excited? I'm findng it hard to deal with the fact that you're trying to discount sightings because people experienced some kind of disorientation or hallucination... That's a pretty weak theory. Im not saying it doesn't happen. But we're not talking about mundane sightings. Not all people are the same. Experiences are had by all calibre of person, Some of whom would definitely not be prone to seeing things that wernt there. You're even suggesting that people had a preconception that aliens exist and therefore see something they don't understand and pin aliens onto it? I never thought about aliens my entire life until 2 years ago when I saw what I saw. Now I HAVE to research it because there's this unknown thing that I cannot identify and noone on earth seems to have an answer. I can't logically deduce what I saw.. Apparently there is no answer. Accept yours, "I got excited and saw something that didn't actually happen". Lol, that's a nice little safe hole of thought you've got there.

Sightings vary from case to case, some are extreme. Some could be as mundane as watching a chinese lantern. But you cannot generalise all sightings and peoples responses to sightings as you have done. Maybe you feel it's rational to deny that other life might have found us here. Yet in truth, the more rational train of thought is the one that realises how much history the universe has had before us.. And coupled with people seeing things that display intelligence and characteristics that don't match earthly creations.. Basically you can't afford the luxory of trying to impose a bias that implies it's not real/possible/happening.

What did you see by the way? Did you read my experience? Couple pages back I think.

Originally posted by WorShip
reply to post by Tearman

 

What did you see by the way? Did you read my experience? Couple pages back I think.

I did read your story. I can't say what you saw, but I can always remind you of certain quirks with human perception. There is the autokinetic effect which can make something traveling in a straight line appear to be moving in an erratic manner. There is the difficulty with gauging the distance side and speed of an unidentified light. I can't say what you saw but if I were you I wouldn't automatically trust my perception or memory of the event.

I can tell you briefly of my experiences. One time I was out in the relative wilderness when I saw above me two lights, they looked like satellites, but were red. They converged on a point from opposite directions and when they met at that point, they instantly went off at 90 degree angles from their original courses. They diverged from that point and traveling across the sky, in opposite directions,away from each other, they eventually passed out of view.

Another time I saw what appeared to be a globe with sharp edges, about the apparent angular size of the full moon, maybe somewhat larger. It was brightly illuminated, mostly white, but with a tint of blue. It passed suddenly into my field of view and traveled across a large section of the sky within 2 or 3 seconds before passing into a valley behind a hill and disappearing. There was no noise of any kind. We tried to locate it again but failed. We did however later see an airplane with bright landing lights on. We got very excited, because we were primed by our previous experience. I can remember saying, "there's no way that's an airplane." I felt pretty embarrassed once it got close enough that we could hear the engine.

I've got a couple other stories but not the time to recount them at the moment.