Unknown over Charleston, SC
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Walking down the outside fire escape looked up and saw several aircraft passing and the one in the middle was leaving a smoke ring trai
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 1998-04-07 → 1998-04-24
From the same sky
Related entries
April 30, 2023 · 8:30 PM · SPHERE
Charleston, SC
Looked up in the sky and noticed an ice cream cone shaped light traveling in the sky . A yellow glow followed it for about 10 seconds and just vanished [NUFORC annotation: Rocket - Probable]
January 16, 2023 · 5:16 PM · OTHER
Charleston, SC
We had left port in Charleston, SC. I was taking pics of the beautiful sunset, actually 3 of them. After taking the first two, I bent over to pick up something from the floor of the balcony when I noticed a green laser light shining on the balcony. Didn't really think anything about it and immediately took the third photo. When I looked at the photo, I saw this green light above the sunset and was puzzled about it. I showed my wife and aunt the photo immediately. We zoomed in on it and it looked like windows on the object. I am 65 years old and never seen anything like this so I'm not sure what it is.
February 13, 2022 · 7:47 PM · SPHERE
Charleston, SC
At approximately 7:47pm est, I was gazing at the Orion constellation when I noticed an orb of white light about the same distance and brightness of Lepus moving in a Northerly direction. It suddenly got extremely bright and stayed that bright for about 2 seconds. Then it immediately dimmed, and continued until it was barely visible. My husband thought it disappeared, but my eye sight is better than his, and I saw it just barely visible as a super dim, tiny light as it became obstructed by our pine tree. I waited to see if it would reappear, but never saw it emerge from beyond our tree. It was completely silent the entire time I observed it, and we observed that it didn't fly in a steady, straight direction. It was very slow, but almost staggered. The flight pattern almost reminds me of an exhausted toddler staggering behind a parent. It was definitely not steady in flight.
March 9, 2021 · 7:48 PM
Charleston, SC
3/9/21 was finishing up a run and at @ 7:48pm a Super Bright Brilliant White object that looked like a comet raced over me (same direction I was running) in the Sky to my left like an airplane coming in for is landing. It lasted About 3secs and was gone from my view. Fastest and brightest object I’ve ever seen in the sky and it seemed so low compared to any comet/ meteor I’ve ever since. I am posting because I thought for sure by now that somebody in Charleston had to have seen it besides me post something on social media but have-not seen anything in the last 2 days. The Sky guide app mentions Comet P/2010 V1 being visible at the same and for a couple of days.but it’s path of visibly doesn’t match the up or trajectory of what I saw. This was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in the Sky in my entire life (48)
November 5, 2020 · 6:27 PM · SPHERE
Charleston, SC
We saw a red glowing object appearing to be similar in size, if not larger, to a star in the sky. Arising off the object, above and below, was a red half-sphere. Imagine the letter ‘C’, but almost cone-shaped, and the red object would be the tip of the cone. This object appeared to glide through the sky at a high altitude— we were able to observe said object for approximately four minutes, it gradually became no longer visible. The object appeared to have changed direction becoming more and more faint in color, however the altitude seemed to have remained the same. At the time that the object apparently changed direction we saw a second glowing spherical object descending toward us, it disappeared once it got very close to the horizon. This second object appeared similar in nature to a flare, without a smoke trail- just the spherical red glowing object. Observation Notes: two observers no noise obtained photo of second object unable to get photo of first object with phone
January 5, 2020 · 4:22 PM · UNKNOWN
Charleston, SC
Witnessed 3+ Flying objects that first appeared as birds, but were so far up in the sky it was hard to comprehend. It was daytime, and the moon was out, but not one cloud in the sky. The objects were buzzing around each other for over a minute when we noticed they began to get in a formation and the next second disappeared. We looked all around the open sky, and couldn’t make sense how they vanished so quickly. They were white in appearance, but also appeared reflective.