NUFORC Sighting 29717

Occurred: 2003-07-09 21:30 Local
Reported: 2003-07-13 16:00 Pacific
Duration: Approx. 1.5 hours
No of observers: 9

Location: Sweetwater, TN, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aircraft nearby

Brilliant red-orange light that could maneuver unlike any human aircraft...

Me and six other acquaintances met at a friend's house to shoot fireworks, as this friend had missed the 4th of July. We were behind this friend's house (on the outskirts of town) in a large open field with a mostly clear night (no clouds visible until 11:00pm or so). Around 9:00pm EST (when it began to get dark) we began firing off things with bright and beautiful explosions, such as artillery shells. At approximately 9:30pm we stopped shooting fireworks for a few moments when we noticed a bright red-orange light moving at about a jet's pace across the skyline. We thought it looked sort of odd, but shrugged it off and went back to shooting fireworks.

After a few more minutes, say 9:40pm, we looked back up and noticed that the craft was moving back in the opposite direction. We decided to watch it for a few moments to try and determine what the strange light was. After staring up at the sky for a while, we noticed the craft suddenly slant itself (to where it was oriented diagonally instead of horizontally, or I assume so -- it was difficult to make out anything but the actual light itself, which seemed to cover the majority of the craft, if not all of it). After this change in orientation, it suddenly turned around and headed back towards its first direction without actually turning around or losing speed. It was just going one direction fairly quickly and suddenly decided to go the other way. About this time we also noticed that there was no smoke or contrails behind the craft, as well as no noise. The sky at this time was still perfectly clear.

After the craft went back and forth (between North and East) 2-3 times, we lost interest again and went back to shooting fireworks. We continued to see the craft while shooting fireworks, and eventually my friend's little brother came up to look at the red-orange light as well, dismissing it as an airplane. How many of our aircrafts are composed of just one giant red-orange light, though? By 10:30pm we all had made the realization that the UFO was not just moving back and forth on one side, but was actually circling our field. It was always within 1.0miles away, but never came much closer than approximately 0.5 miles. The light object would not just go in a complete circle around our field, though. Mostly I saw it move from (1) N to E to N and then under a high treeline continuing N-to-NW, (2) NW to W to NW and back under the treeline, (3) and W to SE and back.

Maybe around 10:50pm (at which point we were still shooting fireworks), we noticed the craft was staying in one position to our South, perhaps 0.75 miles away. We stopped shooting fireworks yet again so we could see what the light was doing. When we stopped shooting fireworks, the craft appeared to begin moving straight toward us rather slowly (the light was growing larger, and no trees were below it to determine its exact distance). Perhaps after reaching 0.5 miles from our spot, it stopped for a brief moment and then began heading West again.

By the time the strange light was back to our West, I noticed an aircraft (most likely a passenger plane), SW of us which was moving West. It did not appear to be pursuing the light or to be near the UFO's actual path (the plane was much further away from us than the light). One of the witnesses to the event began shooting bottle rockets in the direction of the light around this time, which seemed to make the light linger in that one area a little longer (West of us, close to the start of the NW side of the treeline). We yelled at the guy to stop firing bottle rockets at the UFO, which he did. After he stopped, the light continued toward the treeline.

The light went back under the N/NW treeline. It appeared again above the treeline, at which point a second ship came up from below the treeline to "meet" with it. The two ships moved somewhat close together (perhaps 10-15 yards from each other) and remained there one or two minutes (moving around some, but staying in that one area), and then both of them moved their seperate ways and quickly went under the cover of the treeline again. A moment later one of the UFO's came back out from the trees and moved W to SW and back perhaps two times, and then went behind the treeline again. This was the last sign of the ship that we saw, and was around 11:05pm or 11:10pm. Oddly enough, it went away only a few moments after we ran out of fireworks. Heh, perhaps it was watching the show...

By 11:15pm we were cleaning up the little mess we had made in the field (firework debris and containers). Around 11:20pm we began heading from the field to our friend's house (where all of our cars were parked), and had left his house by 11:45pm.

One thing I forgot to mention was that there were several times during the UFO's flight that it would seem to orient itself diagonally and continue on its apparently set course with no noticeable change in speed. This, and its ability to suddenly go in opposite directions without turning around or changing speed, made me believe that the craft was nothing made by man. The UFO appeared to just be composed of that one giant red-orange light, which seemed somewhat solid. However, the light did seem to slowly pulsate a lot of the time. I'd like to say again that there was absolutely no noise, smoke, etc. to accompany the light. There were no wings or propellors, and I could only make out some sort of round-ish shape (perhaps an ellipse, maybe disc-like). We attempted to record the light with a camcorder, but the girl who recorded it said she hadn't looked at the tape (as of July 13, 2003), and I doubt that it picked the object up anyway (camcorders aren't the greatest). If it did, however, show up I will submit the video and some stills from the video to try and give a better image of the object.

I would roughly estimate that the length of the ship is around thirty feet.

I did look for some similar sightings on Google after I came home, and found some ships that look like what we witnessed...

http://www.iwasabducted.com/UFOPictures/ufo9.jpg http://www.iwasabducted.com/raulgarza/anniversary041499b.htm http://www.abduct.com/contact/_contpix/c21.jpg

Also, NUFORC: If you would like to contact me, you can email me at the address I submitted. If you do so, I will give you my phone number so you can actually talk to me, if you would wish. I was just a little worried about the security of your site's report form, so decided not to give too much information via that form. I guess e-mail isn't really any more secure, but... Oh well. ;)

Posted 2003-07-16