NUFORC Sighting 123047

Occurred: 2015-10-22 22:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2015-10-22 21:40 Pacific
Duration: Two independent events ab
No of observers: 3

Location: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

Shape: Circle
Characteristics: Aircraft nearby

Two independent sightings, one light, followed by three lights in a delta formation.

At approximate 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, 2015 my roommate and I were talking out on our balcony which faces about south east. I was sitting in a low chair and my roommate was standing with his back against the railing, facing me and the door to the apartment--he could not see the sky. As we talked I observed a bright light moving across the sky that resembled the profile of a meteor, that is to say the light grew brighter as it moved laterally across the sky from the right of the balcony to the left. That would put it coming from roughly the south to the north. If the light had streaked then disappeared I would have thought it to be just that, a meteor. However, about 2 seconds after the light appeared the path of the light curved sharply upward and disappeared. The light did not fade out, it was there and then it wasn’t there.

This was so strange that I stood up and told my roommate what I had seen. There wasn’t much to say other than I had seen a light moving strangely in the sky. We joked that I was the only one to have seen it and that I now had a ‘UFO’ story that was unsubstantiated. It wasn’t two minutes later that he pointed up into the sky and yelled ‘look at that!’ I thought he was kidding around at first but as I looked three uniformly shaped lights in a delta formation moved rather swiftly and silently through the sky toward the place where I saw the first light curve upward. From our point of view they came over the apartment building which would put them moving roughly east. In the interim between the first light and the sighting of three lights we observed five or six passenger jets flying overhead which is common for this area. These planes took about 30-40 seconds to cross the majority of the sky. The lights we saw crossed about half of the visible sky in less than 4 seconds.

As the lights receded from us, the back right light broke formation in a non-ballistic motion, curving through the sky much like a motorcycle zipping around traffic, and passed between the other two as all three accelerated and then disappeared. Just like the first like the first light that I saw, they did not fade out. They were simply there and then not there. I had my cell phone in my hand while we watched, however I was so completely mystified by what we were seeing that by the time it occurred to me to try and film the lights had gone. It likely wouldn’t have shown up though, because once I had begun to take video most everything was black except for the brightly lit parking lot.

I don’t recall the shape of the first light very clearly. It didn’t really gain my full attention until it curved upward. The three lights however were very round, nearly perfect discs of soft white light. They appeared to be very high above us. I could not discern any detail other than the relative size and shape. There was no tell-tale warbling of jet engines nor any other sound to indicate a fast moving aircraft.

Shortly after our experience another roommate came home and after we told him what we saw, he indicated that he had seen a similar light in the sky akin to the first light that I saw. He was outside and less than 5 miles away to the north west of our apartment. He said that he noticed a bright light in his periphery and turned to look at it. As he did the light was obscured by the little cloud cover that was out. It was strange enough to him that he got the attention of another person next to him but as he directed their attention to the expected position in the sky, the light did not reappear. He did not witness the other three lights.

NUFORC Note:

Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD

Posted 2015-10-29