Teardrop over O'Fallon, MO

The report, as filed

At about 10:00 p.m. on July 4, 2014, I stepped outside, facing west in general, to observe the small fireworks my neighbors were setting off. When I looked up, though, what I saw was far more interesting than any fireworks. I am 50 years old, college educated, and a former UFO skeptic. I called my 85 year-old mother to witness as well; we both watched over the course of about 20 minutes. Initially, we saw 5 orange-red objects arranged in a V-configuration in the area of the sky as we looked toward the Big Dipper. They hovered and moved very slowly, moving independent of each other. They maintained a steady orange-red circular glow at the bottom of the objects, and the objects themselves were dark but their base and outline seemed almost lantern-like in shape and appearance. I chose the description "teardrop" to most closely describe what I saw, but again, they seemed somewhat lantern-like, tapering more narrow toward the top. These objects seemed to be observing the activities below them. After about 5 minutes, they moved off from each other, first very slowly and almost imperceptibly, then one by one ascended toward the northwest horizon and eventually disappeared as a pin-dot at what seemed to be a very high altitude in the atmosphere. They each seemed to accelerate rapidly as they disappeared. About 10 minutes after this first sighting, another such object approached at a fairly low altitude (perhaps 500 ft. to 1000 ft.) from the southeast, traveling very slowly. It moved to where we were looking toward the northwest, then hovered for about a minute or two. It followed a curved trajectory as it slowly moved to the southwest horizon, paused, then ascended rather rapidly and accelerated away to the northwest. This craft seemed to have a very thin white ring surrounding it, barely perceptible, and almost translucent in appearance. It maintained this white ring as it noiselessly accelerated toward the nort! hwest as the other objects had done. I must emphasize that all of these objects moved absolutely noiselessly. Finally, about 5 minutes after that object, the last object appeared overhead, this time approaching from the northeast, and headed westward, before slowing to a hover. Then it seemed to drop in altitude and come toward us (our neighborhood, anyway), as if to be coming lower for a closer look at the activity and at us; I would estimate it was no higher than 500 ft. At that point, the street lamp across the street lost power, although its power was restored about 5 minutes later. My mother became frightened and implored me to retreat into the house, as she had a sense it was coming right at me. It seemed that way to me too, but I did not feel frightened, but was far more curious. It loitered about 20 or 30 seconds, then moved away toward the northwest and high altitude, as the others had done. It also had the interesting white translucent "ring" around it that remained steady as it moved off, which struck me as being so! me manifestation of a self-contained energy field. I tried to get pictures of these objects but unfortunately I was unsuccessful (cheap cameras and background light were probably at fault). As of 10:23 p.m., that seemed to be the end of the incident. Also relevant is that the meteorological conditions included a clear sky, occasional breeze 0-5 mph, no rain, and a temperature around 74 degrees F; all was calm weather-wise.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #111073). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.