Fireball over Harrisonburg, VA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
I saw a ball of light, which quickly disappeared.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center. Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
Ask for the records
What would the paper say?
For a dated, located U.S. sighting, FAA radar data and ATC communications are the records most likely to exist. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 1997-02-12 → 1997-03-01
From the same sky
Related entries
May 16, 2020 · 4:45 AM · CHANGING
Harrisonburg, VA
Not usually up at this time but happened to look out my window early the morning of 5/16/20 and noticed a bright orange-white object in the sky East from my vantage point in western VA. Because of clouds moving across the sky, the object was in and out of my view and at one point seemed to change shape..almost a rectangular shape, small end up. I could not discern any movement, it seemed to be stationary.This was a very bright light tho not quite neon. Eventually disappeared or was covered by clouds tho I did hang around to see if it would reappear...it did not.
January 18, 2020 · 1:06 AM · TRIANGLE
Harrisonburg, VA
Triangular light pattern rising slowly over northeast of Harrisonburg into the clouds. Followed seconds later by a single light.
January 6, 2020 · 1:45 PM · UNKNOWN
Harrisonburg, VA
As I was driving to work I noticed a very short contrail plummeting toward the ground. About 5 minutes go by, and 3 aircraft coming from NE, N, and NW start closing in on the object. As soon as the aircraft coming in from NE drew near, the contrail changed direction and started heading South. After 10 more minutes all three aircraft were closing in on the contrail, but that was all I got to see before my exit.
April 24, 2019 · 10:45 PM · TRIANGLE
Harrisonburg, VA
Shape of a right triangle, with a white light in the central area and rainbow emitting from the white light, forming the shape of the triangle. As soon as I saw it, it "compressed" or "concentrated" into a single straight, white line and vanished. Appeared and disappeared without any sort of special effect. It appeared as if it was there the whole time and disappeared as if it was never there. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD
October 22, 2015 · 10:30 PM · CIRCLE
Harrisonburg, VA
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. Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD
June 6, 2015 · 12:30 AM · SPHERE
Harrisonburg, VA
I was leaving my friends house late in the summer to head back to mine a few streets over. He had grabbed a cigarette and we sat on the chairs outside glancing up at the stars, it was a clear warm night. He was an avid listener to coast to coast AM so we would always joke about if/when we were gonna see something. We were chatting about plans and I said alright I'm out bye! As I turned and walked he said my name as to get my attention. When I turned back to him thats when I saw it... A orange orb hovering between us and the house across the back yard, distance to house would be under 50 yards and typical 1 or 2 story height. The orb was close though with a size of maybe beach ball or yoga ball, its honestly hard to tell because of what it did and the shock of seeing it but it seemed to be above the house but nearer to us. They or whatever it was knew we were there. I know this because of the ending of sighting which proves this was not a reflection or hallucination. It was real not "earthly" but very real. It lasted at most a minute or two, at first it was hovering still like a mini sun almost. Then it did a weird jellyfish or dead leaf motion, in and out, getting slightly bigger then slightly smaller and with each pulse in and out it went up maybe 10ish feet. It did that roughly 5 times until the last one it shot off upward and instantly disappeared, we both turned to each other, thinking we just saw something very weird. Here is the freaky part... I took steps out into yard to fully look for it and saw nothing. No less than a minute later we hear this noise from off in the distance, louder and louder until a single military fighter jet, no lights of any kind came screaming down in an obvious dive chase from higher up. I've seen blue angels and others do tricks and show off at norfolk/va beach multiple times, very familiar with the sounds they make. This was a jet looking for that orb, which was obviously toying with him when it decided to come show off to us or say hello, who knows. All I know is we were in shock and out of nowhere that jet probably high up in the sky saw it again and dive chased it not knowing we had front row seats to the whole thing. I would love to have a chat with that pilot because he must've had that control stick fully pulled back when he crossed over us, he was that low. We had both seen questionable things like lights or things in the sky but they could've been anything really. Those combined events however will forever be engrained in my memory. I still get goosebumps thinking about the sound that jet made as it passed us...