Size of Object(s)

Hard to estimate due to altitude and motion.

Distance to Object(s) & Altitude

Above cirrus clouds, probaly 20,000 feet or higher

Shape of Object(s)

small, round lights

Color of Object(s):

bright reddish-orange

Full Description & Details

My wife and I had gone to some friends' dinner party in the Heights neighborhood of Houston, TX one afternoon around Memorial Day, if I remember correctly; it's been about 17 years, but it wasn’t yet oppressively hot, so it must have been very early in summer. We were all in the backyard while the food was cooking; around a quarter to six in the evening, one of the guests, who was lying in a hammock behind me called my attention to something in the sky that he'd been observing for some moments.

"What do you think those are?" he asked. I looked up and noticed some very bright orange lights, the color of hot coals when blown upon; they seemed to be round and not extremely large, but it’s hard to estimate their size. There was a light scattering of high cirrus or cirrostratus clouds at the time, and these lights gave the appearance of being well beyond them, so they must have been at a fairly high altitude. As I watched for a few moments, I estimated about 12-15 of these objects; I can't say exactly how many there were because of the amount of time that has passed and because of the fact that some of the objects moved around while others appeared stationary and sometimes some of them were briefly obscured by the cirrus clouds. I quickly called the attention of the other guests to these objects. There were perhaps a dozen of us present at the time and everyone looked up to watch this odd spectacle.

It was quite unlike anything any of us had ever witnessed before. While four of the objects appeared to maintain a steady position the others would suddenly move and stop again just as suddenly. The movements didn't appear to be random but rather to form patterns between the moving objects and with the stationary objects, which themselves formed a sort of quadrangle. The moving objects would sometimes move separately and sometimes by two’s or three’s together; they would form polygonal shapes among themselves, and one vertex of these polygons would itself form a triangle with a side of the stationary quadrangle. The movements would start and stop suddenly without any other evidence of propulsion, such as smoke or vapor trails, etc. The movements themselves appeared very leisurely, but considering the altitude that these objects seemed to be at, the distance covered must have been considerable, as these objects occupied perhaps half of the sky overhead for a good 12-15 minutes. Some of the guests watched them for a few moments and then lost interest, while others of them watched them until they moved off out of sight. Finally about 6:00 pm, the majority of these objects, including the apparently stationary center of the group moved off out of view to one side of the side of the sky while the remaining three moved off in the opposite direction; I’m afraid it’s been too long to confidently state which compass directions those would have been. Their departing motion seemed to be just as unhurried as their “maneuvering” had been.

Just in case anyone’s wondering, some of the guests had been drinking alcohol (it was a Texas barbecue, after all), but I myself was a confirmed teetotaler at the time. I can categorically state that these objects, whatever they might have been, were neither weather balloons, secret military test aircraft, Venus, Jupiter, swamp gas or any of the other claims with which such sightings are typically written off. Their manner of sudden motion, sudden stopping and subsequent motionlessness were inconsistent with any known system of craft propulsion, and I find that it stretches credibility to the breaking point to suggest that such methods of propulsion might have been developed in secret without any hint of such a technological advance leaking out at some point. We did not report the sighting to any authorities – what would be the point? Nor did we ever hear of any subsequent corroboration by any other witnesses, or at least none that my wife or I knew of.

Witness Background

Background in mechanical engineering, civil engineering and architecture.

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