Light over Roanoke, VA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Stationary light above Roanoke City Virigna From dusk to 9-10pm every night.
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 2013-11-05 → 2013-11-22
From the same sky
Related entries
September 5, 2023 · 6:28 AM · TRIANGLE
Roanoke, VA
Object appeared to possibly be a triangle. Looking through binoculars there was a black circle moving across the surface. Watched it for 30 minutes and it hovered in the same place with no noise. It became harder to see as the sing got brighter until it could no longer be seen. It never moved from the original spot
January 1, 2023 · 12:00 PM · UNKNOWN
Roanoke, VA
Jerky movements from huge red bell
January 14, 2022 · 9:37 PM · CHANGING
Roanoke, VA
At around 10 pm on Friday, January 14, 2022, my mother-in-law texted a video of strange lights in the sky behind her house with a message that read, “ Wonder what in the world this is on a cold Friday night?????”. The lights appear to be high in the sky, moving in a circular pattern back-and-forth together and then apart from each other. At first, I thought it was maybe a drone or some sort of party lights. But, after watching the video a couple of times, I’m not sure. I thought it may be something of interest to your organization.
January 1, 2022 · 2:25 PM · OTHER
Roanoke, VA
I was sitting on my front porch. Weather was clear and warm for January. Was mid-afternoon. Can't remember the exact day. I heard a sound somewhat like a small private prop. plane, but different. I live just a mile from Roanoke-Blacksburg regional airport. I like aircraft, so I was interested to see what this odd-sounding plane was. I looked around, but didn't see anything at first. Then, I looked up and toward the south, and up a few thousand feet. I saw a craft that looked, as best I can describe, like an air launched cruise missile. A long, but not cylindrical fuselage with vertical and horizontal stabs at the rear. No wings. Maybe a bit larger than a private plane. It had a brown haze around it. The haze and no wings is what made me want to report this incident. Aircraft flying by before this at altitude were very clear with no haze. It was flying level in a south-south easterly direction. It's speed was unremarkable at the moment I saw it. My binoculars were just inside my front door, about eight feet from where I was sitting. I reached in and grabbed them to get a better look at the craft, but it had disappeared in those few seconds I had my back turned. I can't swear that the noise I heard was this craft, since I'm so close to the airport, but it did get me looking all around. I have looked at photos of our military drones, but none look like what I saw. The ALCM is the closest thing to what it looked like.
December 3, 2021 · 5:30 PM · CIRCLE
Roanoke, VA
It was around 5:30 pm. It was dusk but still light outside. As my son and I were pulling out of the Walmart and turning left onto Franklin rd, I noticed an oddly bright, low, and large “star” in the sky almost directly in front of us. I asked my son what he thought it was he said it could be a big star or planet. We both said it was still so bright outside to see a star and it was definitely too large for a star. I thought it was also very low in the sky. Our light changed and I said well it’s probably a planet or something and we made a right hand turn onto Franklin rd and ran another errand. About 40-45 minutes later we were finished. It was now completely dark and we were heading home driving down Bent mountain rd when we spotted it again. It was in the exact same spot but we were seeing it from the back side now. A different perspective from the first time we saw it. It was now a little more discernible. It was very bright in the sky and lower than any other “star”. I now noticed it was oddly shaped. It was circular but with possibly an appendage coming from the top left area. My son even said he thought something was coming out of it. It was now emitting a bluish green light from only the top left of the “craft” over the area where, what I thought was some kind of appendage. My son thought the appendage was just light glare. The bottom of the “craft” was emitting white light. I could now tell it had a shape, meaning I could discern it was a 3 dimensional circular object. Not just a light in the sky. It appeared to be a craft of some type. I cannot say how high in the sky it was, other than to say it was about 4x the size of a large bright star. My son thought it maybe moved a little but I thought it was stationary. It was difficult to tell because we were driving about 45 mph on a fairly winding rd. I’m certain it never moved. We viewed it almost the entire drive down bent mountain rd. I was driving so I only was able to look at it for a few seconds then turn my eyes back to the road. It was in view in the neighborhood of about 4 minutes. We lost sight of it once we got closer to 12 O’clock Knob rd. We made our right hand turn on that rd and then a left onto Lost Mountain rd. I was hoping we would be able to see it again once we arrived at our house but we couldn’t from our elevation. We live in a Mountain area surrounded by trees. Anyway, there were a lot of people on the road and I can’t imagine we were the only people to notice it. One other thing that may be helpful. We live about 30 min from Roanoke airport and we saw an airplane in the vicinity of the object.
July 13, 2020 · 1:15 AM · LIGHT
Roanoke, VA
I went outside my apartment for a walk. I like to sit and swing at the communal playground and look at the stars while smoking. There was a stagnet star I noticed in the sky, but didn't give mind to. It suddenly expanded into a bright fiery white/blue light and zoomed away to the left. It made a light trail behind it as it zipped away. I got up to see where it went but it was gone .