NUFORC Sighting 104279

Occurred: 2008-05-01 23:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2013-11-08 21:23 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Daleville, VA, USA

Shape: Light


Saw an orangish fireball moving in erratic patterns in the sky for approximately 10 minutes over Carvins Cove.

It was around the spring or summer of 2008. I was working as closing manager at the BlockBuster in Daleville, Botetourt County, Virginia (now closed) and was working with two other people. We closed the store at 11:00 and were ready to leave by about 11:15 or 11:20 or so.

When we walked out into the parking lot (the Botetourt Commons parking lot where Kroger is), we stopped at my co-worker's truck to talk. While we were standing there talking, one of us looked toward the West and saw the object and directed our attention toward it. He said something like, "What is that?," and we watched it but could never figure it out. It was the topic of our conversation for the next 5 to 10 minutes, and just about the time we were losing interest in it, we noticed that it had disappeared. We had not actually seen it leave.

Here is my description of it. It was an orange ball of light. It did not appear to me to flicker like a fire, but just a steady orange glow, like a street lamp. Sometimes it stood still, then would slowly move in one direction, start turning in an arc, stop, move in another direction, and just generally moved erratically at different speeds in a relatively small area of the sky.

It was very high up but I couldn't tell how high or estimate its size, but it was significantly bigger than a star or planet. I have lived near airports and seen all sorts of aircraft, but this did not behave like any of them. It didn't seem to have a specific destination but just circled around erratically in the sky, turning too abruptly and moving too rapidly at times to be a helicopter or plane.

It also made no noise. For a helicopter to be so far away as for me not to hear it (because they are very loud), it would not be able to appear to make the kinds of movements that this object was! easily making. The best way I can describe the pattern it made is like lazy figure 8's that abruptly stopped and started and reversed direction at times.

When I looked on Google maps later at the location in the sky where we saw the object, I realized that we were looking directly towards Carvin's Cove, where most people in the Roanoke area get their water. It was directly on the other side of the mountain that the object appeared to be "dancing" over.

None of us three thought too much of it at the time except that if we told people that we had seen a UFO (since we literally couldn't identify it) they would just think we were joking or full of it. I still don't know what it was, I only know what it wasn't.




NUFORC Note:

Witness elects to remain semi-anonymous; provides no contact information. PD


Posted 2013-11-11

© 2023 National UFO Reporting Center. All rights reserved. Use or reproduction within any application without written consent is prohibited.