Light over Petaluma, CA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
On the night of July 4, 2014, my husband and I went to the Petaluma Fairgrounds in Sonoma County, California, to watch the fireworks as we have done for several years. A few minutes into the show, I saw what I thought was an airplane flying by in the distance, and I remarked to my husband how nice it was that the passengers got to see the fireworks. As we continued to watch the fireworks with the aircraft in the distance behind the light display, I saw the craft suddenly change direction which immediately piqued my interest. I again pointed out the craft to my husband to note its change in direction. The craft that we were watching did not have any discernible form other than the light coming from it, which would change from bright, flashing red, to a bright flashing green, and would also stay solidly colored in each tone as well (not flashing) with no discernible pattern to the change in color or flashing patterns. We continued to watch this craft move from! side to side across the horizon, which at my best guestimation would be perhaps the distance of a few miles (again it was difficult to tell it’s height and true distance from us in relation to the horizon) but it was as high as the fireworks were and would disappear below the horizon, only to rise again, many times hovering perfectly still with no movement whatsoever, to quickly moving to the left or right, then up and down. When the fireworks ended, only about a 20 minute show, so we saw this occur for about 10-15 minutes, the craft went below the horizon and we thought it had gone, only to get up and prepare to leave and we saw it again. This time it was leftward to us, moved back and forth a few times over the course of maybe 3-4 minutes and then made a final descent below the horizon. I would like to state that I am definitely a skeptic of so-called UFO sightings. This is not the sort of thing that I seek out, that thrills me, or even particularly scares me, I primarily just laugh these sorts of things off whether heard from someone or in say a movie. I am perhaps mostly just in a state of disbelief. No aircraft that I have ever seen or even know of can behave or perform in the manner I saw this craft do tonight. Hovering perfectly, perfectly still, moving from side to side at higher speeds than even a helicopter can move (that I have seen at least), disappearing below the horizon, only to reappear, move about, and then disappear. Unfortunately again we could not discern a shape other than that of the light. The only lights I have seen associated with traditional aircraft seen in the sky would be a blinking red light or a variation therein. This had distinctive brightness, distinctive change from red to green, and change in solid light to blinking. I have! never seen anything like this before, and I knew immediately that I needed to find some place to report this. I believe that I have witnessed a true unidentified flying object, and I am interested to look further into others’ reports of similar experiences. Thank you for the forum and for your time.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #111039). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2014-07-01 → 2014-07-18
From the same sky
Related entries
July 3, 2020 · 11:30 PM · LIGHT
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I was stargazing with one of my friends on a field at an. elementary school, around 11:30 at night, when we saw a star-like light appear, I had seen similar ones a month earlier and thought they were UFOs too. It wasn’t blinking or twinkling and wasn’t a star, plane, or satellite. When it moved it kind of wavered and moved in one direction, and then curved and went faster and suddenly disappear. And then. Like five minutes later, another one appears in a different part of the sky, it does the same thing and goes in the opposite direction of the other one and disappears.
June 9, 2020 · 10:30 PM · LIGHT
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Me and five of my friends drove out to Elephant Rocks near Dillon Beach to stargaze. We saw some shooting stars and then at around 10:30 pm we saw two lights appear. They looked just like stars. However, they weren’t blinking or twinkling, they were moving very fast, they were curving and not moving in the way a satellite or plane would. One seemed to be following the other, and then the brighter one curved around and they crossed paths very close and then went in separate directions and suddenly disappeared without a trace. And then like 10 minutes later we saw another one in a completely different part of the sky, it was almost wavering slightly and seemed to be rotated almost. And then it changed directions and started going very fast and was able to cross the whole horizon in around 2 minutes and then disappeared like the other ones.
October 7, 2018 · 6:10 PM · FORMATION
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Another set of 4 circle-like ufo figures are suddenly birthed and summoned to follow the previous set of 4 rectangle like formation to near exact motion of direction of the ones prior. In the mean time the orb within the sky has grown dramatically and is clearly vivid and non moving of its location until suddenly is vanished. This is a very rare phenomen here; meaning that even if there has been ufo sightings here in a minuscule manner that this is out of the ordinary. There have been multiple witnesses known via social media outlets that have witnessed and Recorded this phenomenon in multiple different angles within this given location.
April 20, 2017 · 9:30 PM · LIGHT
Petaluma, CA
I am a ranger/landscape supervisor who works for a county agency. The other witness is my parish priest. After a church class, while driving my pickup truck exiting our church parking lot, I saw our parish priest standing at the side of the church, looking up into the night sky in a south east direction. I stopped my truck and asked what he was looking at. He stated that there were some odd looking lights in the sky. I got out of my truck and went to where he was standing and looked up and saw 5 distinct reddish orange lights in the sky, hovering at different places, but in a grouping. The lights were moving very slowly. A couple of lights moved vertically, and then hovered, and then a couple moved laterally very slow. One of the lights rose and then faded into nothing. Another light faded when an airplane seemed like it was getting close to it. One more light rose and then faded into nothing, until the last light descended in altitude and finally disappea! red altogether. The lights seemed to be quite a distance from us. I would guess they were probably 20 miles away, and maybe 5000 to 8000 feet high. All of the lights moved independently of each other, but were in the same grouping or vicinity of each other.
August 28, 2016 · 7:30 PM · CIRCLE
Petaluma, CA
My nine-years-old son was in the backyard and noticed a light in the sky, mentioning that it was too early for the stars and it this one didn’t even look like one. I came out and saw a bright object, obviously not a star, staying in one spot with the sun clearly reflecting off it. Got binoculars and couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like a semi-transparent sphere with five white lights under it. Gave my son the binoculars and asked him what he sees. His words were: “No way, no way.” He also saw the lights underneath it. Called my husband to come out and look. By then the object wasn’t transparent but was an oval shape and reflecting the sun like metal. The object was there for approximately an hour, and then began slowly drifting east until it disappeared. I took a (very bad) picture with my phone but was only be able to capture a faint light spot in the sky. But the picture has a date and time stamp.
February 6, 2016 · 6:40 PM · SPHERE
Petaluma, CA
While sitting on my sofa watching the Golden State Warriors game against the Thunder, saw a dull orange circular object appear through the window in the southeast. Walked outside to see what it was and this orange orb was slowly moving in a generally southeasterly direction. It had a brighter portion which was about 10% of the total size of the object and that part was slowly rotating in an irregular pattern around and through the object. Grabbed my binoculars out of the car and was able to see clearly that that brighter orange glow rotating continued and in trying to identify it the only thing that it was remotely like was a large balloon with a gondola slung underneath it. In this case though, the gondola was on fire as it was significantly brighter than the rest of the object. But the way this brighter portion was moving was not predictable and did not have an obvious pattern or rhythm to it. The dimmer portion of the orb looked to have a semblance of a grid-like appearance, but when the brighter portion of the glow moved across the face of it, the grid was no longer visible due to the greater intensity of the light. After about four minutes of relatively slow and consistently paced movement from my right to left, it appeared to turn south and head toward San Francisco roughly. It moved away at a regular pace for several seconds and then appeared to speed up significantly until it became too small to view and then disappeared. The speed of this last part seemed unlike anything that I've seen before, as though the physics I am aware of were no longer operating on this object. The disappearance from view in the last ten seconds essentially happened too fast to be explained by any previous experience I've had. There was no sound involved at all. This is the first time that I have ever seen, much less reported, anything like this. Until I did a Google search on 'orange object in the night sky over Petaluma tonight,' I was unaware of websites like this. I'm a totally sane person and this was in no way imagined. I'm a professional IT Project Manager and have been in the industry for many years with increasing levels of responsibility. Folks like me are pretty grounded as a rule or would not be able to survive in these kinds of roles for long. Keeping calm under great pressure is a prerequisite for this work. I've got no idea who reads these entries or what is done with them, but felt that if there is something weird around and others have seen the same thing, maybe it is a good idea to report. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD