What Did I See On Hilton Head Island?

FIRST OF ALL, You people need to get off of this Chinese lantern thing because EVERYONE knows what they look like bye now. Those lights WERE NOT lanterns, they were flares. NOT the kind from a boat. These flares are dropped off of the east coast as far as Virginia to Florida. They are an everynight thing here in South Carolina. Thing is, they are dropped from helicopters that are WAY up and you can see the blue blinking lights with BINOCULARS ONLY, you cant see the copters with the nakes eye, BUT on a quiet night you can hear them, but rarely. These balls of light appear, multiply (which is typical with these flares) fade in and out and only last seconds. I believe they are called UL or UAL coast guard flares. Sorry for the caps but Ive had enough of the Chinese lantern video, everytime there are orange lights in the sky someone posts that SAME video,,,,,,,,,,daym..I didn't know what those lights were for a long time, we would all go out on the beach at 8:30 every night for a while and they were always out there. THAT BEING SAID,you could have seen something else but the description sounds the same, there are tone of myrtle beach "ufo" lights videos on youtube, check em out and see if its the same thing. .........................on another note, there is an island off of Beaufort that has monkeys (if you didn't know and are interested),,the monkeys are big and mean but worth going to see, don't pull your boat up to the island and dock because they will rip it apart. This is not a joke.

reply to post by jtrenthacker


Back in December of 1980, my best buddy and I were on the walls of old Fort Screven on Tybee Island (Georgia). We saw an amber/orange object hover over the ocean in tough winds for quite a while. Prior to that, we saw a pair descending slowly over the Savannah River just north and west of Fort Pulaski.

When I finally decided to file a report with MUFON in the 90s, I found that we were not the only ones to see this along the coast.

It was not a helicopter or anything like a Chinese lantern because the winds were too strong for it to have held position. It was not a floating buoy... or a plane.

To this day, I have no idea what it was... just knowing for certain, what it was not.

Alien starships...are sometimes attracted to naval/air military installations. It's a good way to show-off who's the aerial top gun of our skies --- with me --- no doubt, as to who's top gun.

OP- Did the lighted object look huge? Did it seem to be far away? How many degrees was it above the horizon? Did the object appear too be below the cloud cover?

I would be more excited... if the object you saw was a complete perfect fiery-balled sphere and rather huge looking; in relation to the approx. distance.

Originally posted by redoubt
reply to post by jtrenthacker

 

Back in December of 1980, my best buddy and I were on the walls of old Fort Screven on Tybee Island (Georgia). We saw an amber/orange object hover over the ocean in tough winds for quite a while. Prior to that, we saw a pair descending slowly over the Savannah River just north and west of Fort Pulaski.

When I finally decided to file a report with MUFON in the 90s, I found that we were not the only ones to see this along the coast.

It was not a helicopter or anything like a Chinese lantern because the winds were too strong for it to have held position. It was not a floating buoy... or a plane.

To this day, I have no idea what it was... just knowing for certain, what it was not.

What makes you so confident it was not a plane?

Planes with landing lights can look like a single amber-colored orb, and if they are flying more-or-less toward you they may appear to be hovering in one place, and if they are also descending, that hovering motion m,ay appear to dip down very slowly. They could also appear to be slowly moving side-to-side, depending on the path of their flight toward you.

A plane coming toward you with a landing light may be far enough away (10+ miles) that all you see is that single amber or white landing light and hear no sound from it.

reply to post by Erno86


Look at my sketch. That's about how large it looked in the sky from where we were standing. It appeared to be out over the water quite a distance away. Obviously I have no way of knowing, but it gave me that impression. I did not mention in the op, but it was quite breezy that night.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


I understand what your saying but what we saw was pretty close to the sketch I made. The object was fairly big. I just don't see anyway it could have been aircraft lights.

reply to post by jtrenthacker


Do you think the fiery object could bright enough to have been seen above or in the cloud cover --- or did the orb appear to be below the cloud cover? The other light source in your sketch...is that moonlight?

Thanks

Lanterns are out. Way too overused for sighting explanations. Flares? Possibly.

I believe you saw something you can't explain, and there is nothing wrong with that!

reply to post by Erno86


It was below the cloud cover. There was barely any moonlight because of the cloud cover and the moon was only a sliver anyways. I'm not sure it would have been bright enough to see from above the clouds.

At a glance, I have seen some very large oddly shaped objects in the sky but on closer scrutiny it turned out to be the Moon partially covered by clouds. I have seen numerous UFO images that were overexposed to give an appearance of something strange that turned out to be the Moon.

My brief synopsis of what the object the OP is discussing is.

Here are some examples:

The issue here is this....

In a day and age where no one leaves the house without a smart phone....we still have no images of the all too commonly seen UFO's.
'
Go figure... 'oh, sorry, I left my phone at home!'

Originally posted by fishmaster
...my family frequents the island every year for the pat 20+ years.

....and did they see anything [ie. any UFOs] whilst they were there visiting???

reply to post by MadMax7


On vacation, especially at the beach at night, I tend to cut the cord with my smart phone. We were out for a simple walk by the ocean. Even if I had my iPhone with me, I'm not sure if it would have helped my case much. I've seen beautiful full moons and taken a pic only for it to show a tiny little dot in the sky. iPhone's suck at night photography.

I am from Hilton Head and visit about once a year to see family, during the spring and summer months all lights on the beach are out by law to encourage the hatching endangered sea turtles to move toward the oceans instead of land. some enterprising wildlife fans have taken to launching chinese lanterns to serve as beacons for the hatchlings. Hilton Head also sits between Hunter army/air base in Savannah and Paris Island Marine Corps. and Beaufort Naval air station (I was born at Beaufort Naval Hospital when my father was attached to an air squadron at Paris island).I have witnessed jets from all 3 bases with afterburners on. Either they or chinese lanterns would produce the flame effects you witnessed.

This phenomena is gaining more and more publicity. I personally witnessed these lights on my vacation last year (2012) in Holden Beach, NC. It was completely by accidents one evening early in my vacation that my partner spotted a series of these lights just as we were getting ready to go in for the night. Needless to say, we remained on the deck for another hour and a half. We proceeded to experience these lights nightly for the rest of the week. I have some crude photos, but nothing too convincing. What I do know is that THEY ARE NOT CHINESE LANTERNS.

If you do a Google search, you will find that there is a TON of reports on these orange lights.

www.google.com...

www.wwaytv3.com...

These are the photos I shot with my point and shoot Nikon from the Holden Beach pier. We went to the pier nightly at dusk. The lights appeared around 8pm-ish. I do have the original photos with exif data. These are blown up screen caps of the originals. The lights were at quite a distance...probably upwards of 8 miles out. These certainly aren't of proof quality, but I was there, I saw this phenomena. I'm headed back in less than a month with no better camera. haha Looking foward. Beachfront this year.

reply to post by glitchinthematrix


Nice! The photos you have look sort of similar to my experience, except it was just one large object. Very interesting.

OP, thanks for sharing your story. Sounds somewhat similar to what I saw one night driving home from work, however, the object I saw didn't flicker out, it took off. And very fast, too.

The object I saw that piqued my interested in the world of UFO and it's associated phenomena was an orange/amber colored light type object. Triangle shaped (sort of like two lights on bottom, one on top but it was glowing all over) and hovering. No sound. Definitely NOT a flare, not a lantern, etc. The reason I say this is because I saw it take off at a VERY high rate of speed. I was not the only person who witnessed it as I was driving on the highway and many people pulled over to check it out. During the whole minute or so that I saw this thing, it sort of pulsated, and then bam; it was gone. I feel that we were looking at the bottom of what ever this was, and seeing the part that made it go zoom, lol.

Funny thing is, I had my phone in the car right next to me but I didn't ONCE even think to take a picture or try to get video of it, which totally bums me out, but I was like in total awe. However, I still find this bit to be especially odd since I am a photographer.

I would love to find out what these types of things are. Like I said, I know it wasn't a flare or lantern, etc. It was definitely something that moved under intelligent control, made no noise, and took off at a very high rate of speed from a hovering/stopped position. It moved faster than anything I have ever seen. Could be some sort of new tech as I am only about 50 mi. south of Wright Pat AFB, but I haven't seen anything like that since.

Thanks again for sharing your story. I NEVER read, researched or watched any "UFO" type subject matter prior to that night. Since then, I have become very interested in the subject and find it very fascinating.

Can StElmo's fire or other unusual meteorological phenomema be ruled out?.

reply to post by MadMax7


I found (me, the camera nut) that I am too busy looking at the stupid thing to reach in my pocket and get the thing, time and again!

You end up thinking about that sort of thing later.

UFOO: Unidentified Flying Orange Orb