NUFORC Sighting 62617

Occurred: 2008-04-14 12:10 Local
Reported: 2008-04-18 18:39 Pacific
Duration: One Min.
No of observers: 1

Location: McHenry, IL, USA

Shape: Changing
Characteristics: Changed Colo

Orange object moving slowly while oscilating wildly is seen approaching, then changes to a point of light.

04-14-2008, @12:10:17 pm. (Derived from the exif data of the first picture.) Approximate location was the City of McHenry, Illinois, the intersection of Routes 31 and Bull Valley road, and traveling South from there, approximately one quarter mile.

As I was walking down my driveway to check my mailbox, I saw what seemed to be a kite or windblown scarf, brilliant orange and darker orange in color, it was slowly moving toward me traveling from North to South very slowly, its size at the time appeared to be no more than maybe four feet in any direction. I did not observe it intensely because it had a motion as though moving up and down as if tethered by a string from the ground, the speed of the oscillations were approximately three or four cycles per second, the range of motion restrained to about twice it’s physical size.

The odd motion had me ready to grab for my pocket Sony camera that I keep with me, but still not enough to trigger a reaction to take an image, "no need to waste memory card space," I thought.

I continued on to check the mail, it had not come yet, when I looked to see where "the Kite" was located, all my internal alarms went off. The object was now abreast of me, it’s path seemed to be about 200 feet West of me, but I had no reference to gauge it's actual size, and it was never directly over me, it was clear to me that something strange was happening, the “thing” was rising up while still traveling due South, now directly West of my position, and abreast of me, any sense of its size was now lost, it may have been much larger than my initial estimate. It is worth noting that the bizarre appearance and motion of the Orange object matched nothing in my mental catalog of known objects, it is almost impossible to even describe it accurately because it looked so strange, it had sharp angles and curves and as it was rising in front of me, it's motions were so fast as to cause it to be a blur as it was close to my position. The motion at this angle were now a horizontal back ! and fort h, as it was rising, same frequency of cycles per second as noted before, about three of four times per second, and still rapidly rising. I did grab my camera, got it turned on, as I lifted it up, the LCD screen was almost completely washed out by the brilliant sunlit sky, I had to approximate the correct direction, the camera is set in bracket mode, it will take a series of three frames, each with a different exposure, one overexposed, one optimized, and one underexposed, usually at least one will be usable, and you can make an HDR image by combining all three together. As I depressed the shutter button, the multi hued Orange “thing”, abruptly faded out within one second, an extremely brilliant strangely hued point source of light popped into view slightly to the south of the orange colored object at the same instant, as the first orange colored one dissolved, the bright light appeared. The distance between the two objects locations was about the size of my fist held at arm’s length. Upon examining the camera images I saw that I did capture the light points but they are quite underwhelming compared to the impact of the actual event. The Sony cameras lens was set to minimum zoom which is 38mm, the average 35mm cameras lens would be 50mm, this means my camera (a Sony DSC T9), was set to a fish eye setting as opposed to a zoomed in setting, this makes the light I saw too small and far away looking to provide images with high detail. The light had an odd purplish blue cast to it a little bit like a welders arc, but strangely different, to my amazement, this small yet powerfully bright light began immediately moving up and away now traveling Southwest an unknown distance, in just a second, it paused in its apparent movement and ascension, but then engaged in a series of severe and rapid saw tooth type oscillations, occurring within a second, while staying within an imaginary box, the size of which I could not guess due to a lack of references pertaining to size and distance. The small bright light seemed to! have an abundance of energy to burn judging by its erratic and speedy movements. I was taking pictures all the time, the three images are taken in quick succession probably almost occurring within a second, there is a delay of several seconds as the three shots are written to the memory card and then it will take another series of three. The point source light then either dimmed or moved away at an incredibly fast rate, leaving again in a steep vertical climb, with a slight Southwest direction of travel. My initial reaction as it disappeared from sight was that the thing I had just witnessed was very unusual and most likely not caused by any natural phenomenon I am familiar with, the rapid oscillations were so fast that I saw a streaking or elongating effect that happens with fast moving very luminous objects viewed with my naked eye. I would say the after image (The streaking effect.), behind the light source was very noticeable, like rapidly waving a glowing stick of incense in the dark. My impression of what it was is mixed, the first manifestation looked like something solid, but it moved erratically, it seemed to have a physical presence. When the point source of light appeared, it is hard to imagine anything moving so erratically could be moving under intelligent control, the motions were just so extreme. Why would such radical motions be part of its operation or function, it does not make sense. I took pictures, but they are only of use to someone with some computer graphics background, I think someone with some Photoshop skills could overlay some of the pictures and show the trajectory that the object took as it moved away. There are foreground objects (Trees and power lines), in enough of the frames that they could be overlaid to show the differing locations of the light as time elapsed. The digital images do not show any streaking caused by the rapid motion, perhaps because of the bright conditions, the automatic settings most likely would have selected a very fast shutter speed on the camera, or it c! ould be that the object happened to be moving at a slower speed at the moment the frames were taken. The pictures have no value to the casual observer, as far as the wow factor goes. But the testimony I give is honest and true.

As for myself, I have a limited educational background, but have always been a scientifically minded person and was an Ultra light aircraft pilot, with a good understanding of weather and other natural phenomena. I enjoy watching YouTube videos and am very skeptical of 99% of the UFO videos and images seen there and elsewhere. I enjoy reading and contributing to the Above Top secret forums, especially those topics concerning alleged UFO activities. The Chad Drone incident was covered there extensively with hundreds of contributors joining together to analyze the data, eventually a consensus was reached that it was a hoax. In short, this object flew over the wrong person, if it was attempting to be stealthy! I feel that I am very qualified to make an impartial, detailed report detailing the behavior and visual characteristics of this event.

My Flickr account has the images here. http://flickr.com/photos/ring0/sets/72157604542071914/ there are 21 images in all. I hereby release them to the public domain, free to use for nonprofit purposes. They are of very low usefulness for the casual viewer, no craft are seen, only a hard to see point of light in most of them, the last few images show none, but I included all the frames that I took that day. The few people I have shown them to have said that they do not show anything of an interesting nature, and I cannot blame them, but there is enough there to satisfy myself that I was not imagining the incident.

Posted 2008-06-12