Fireball over Fredricksburg, VA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Me, my brother, my sister, & her husband were outside swimming at around 12:20AM in the morning. We watched what looked like 5 fireballs fly from one side of the sky to the other. "Float" is a more apt term. The objects appeared to have a center made of fire, which looked like a candle flame, surrounded by an orange halo. (Like a candle flame in a dark room would make.) The fire in the center was orange as well. These objects made no sound what-so-ever. They all moved with the exact same speed, in the exact same direction, along the exact same trajectory. Each vanished over the horizon behind our house. None of us have ever seen anything remotely like this before. They looked like fireballs, but moved like aircraft, made no noise, and seemed to 'float', rather than 'fly'.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #128550). 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 2016-07-15 → 2016-08-01