NUFORC Sighting 129920

Occurred: 2016-09-13 03:30 Local
Reported: 2016-09-14 00:15 Pacific
Duration: 20 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Gardner, MA, USA

Shape: Orb
Characteristics: Left a trail

Baseball-sized Orange Orb Witnessed

Wife and I walked outdoors to our patio on the northwest side of our new country home at approximately 3:15 AM ET in Gardner, MA. We're new to the neighborhood, so we are diligent about opening and closing the door silently as not to disturb the neighbors who often have their windows open during the warm summer months.

Being a sound engineer, I immediately noticed a deafening quiet that was unmistakable to me. No crickets, no wind, no cars, nothing. I whispered "Wow, it's really quiet out here. A little too quiet". My wife said nothing.

It was dark enough so that you could not see the sky behind the trees. I realized we had a huge moon the night before, so the 'no moon' darkness had struck me as weird. Elapsed time we were outside was about 2-3 minutes. We were both facing west toward our neighbors house when we both saw a single spherical light appear, with no dynamics in luminosity. Nothing at first, then right to full-on brightness.

The singular amber / orange glow was the same exact color as the street lamp but much brighter, and the shape was spherical instead of oval, about the size of a baseball or softball. The street lamp seemed to be about 10+ feet directly behind the object we saw. The object kept an altitude approximately 5 feet below the street lamp from our perspective.

The glowing sphere never stopped moving at any point since it appeared. It moved at about the speed of a house fly, in a perfect counter-clockwise circle, with a slightly accelerated figure 8 pattern every few revolutions. The object moved in a circle pattern that was about 2 feet in diameter. It left a trail of light behind itself in the same color that faded linearly, but was overrun by the sphere again before the light trail fully dissipated.

I whispered, "Do you see that?". Standing slightly in front of me, my wife leaned toward my viewpoint on the patio and said, "Yea, what is that?". It seemed that once this object felt us notice it's presence, it disappeared with no fade, instant off and gone. The object was gone even before I could open my Camera app.

I noticed some trees between the object we saw and our patio. So I waited until daylight this morning to see if it could have been street lamp light refracting off of a bunch of shiny leaves, but there are barely any leaves to obstruct the view apparently. We never saw anything block the perspective of the object while it appeared and danced for approximately 15-20 seconds in total.

After it disappeared, I came to my senses and opened my Camera app. I was surprised to see a Camera flash to our far right from across the street. I was sure the neighbors saw the object too and were taking a photo, while forgetting to disable the camera flash. When I looked over, I saw another 5000k temp flash in the gloss of the neighbors car, but no light hit the street or tree next to where the source would be. Neighbors were asleep with all lights off an nobody was outside at all.

No activity so far yet tonight. But I will be ready for it next time.

Posted 2016-09-15

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