Skip to content
UAP Nexus
As reported

Oval over Centerville, IA

A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.

The report, as filed

On the morning of September 8, 2016, between 12:30 and 1:00 am, I observed an orange light in the sky on the eastern edge of Centerville, Iowa. When I first noticed the light my first thought was it’s another small plane, but then I realized it didn’t have the normal lights of a plane, it was glowing orange. I could see it just above a line of tree tops, moving rather slowly to the north, until it disappeared behind taller trees. In about a minute, maybe less, it appeared again, moving back in the opposite direction. I watched until it again disappeared behind the trees. Its shape was almost oval, except that it was more flat on the bottom, and was raised on the top, which made me think it might have been a disc shaped craft. I couldn’t be sure how big it might have been since I had nothing to use as a reference, and I couldn’t be sure how far away it was, but it seemed to be rather low in the sky moving slowly and I thought maybe it was looking for something. I sometimes see small planes this low, so I’m thinking it was about the size of one of those. It was a clear and calm night, and this thing kept the same speed in both directions.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #129945). 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 2016-09-05 → 2016-09-22

From the same sky

Related entries

August 4, 2019 · 10:00 PM · CIGAR

Centerville, IA

Seen several what looked to be planes but had no wings. Looked to be 'fake planes" they went in straight lines and looked like planes with no wings and flashing dull white lights that resembled planes flashing but where clearly not planes. A few just appeared from no where and gone just as quick.

August 4, 2015 · 9:40 PM · SPHERE

Centerville, IA

I was looking over lake Rathbun it was beautiful, the sun was past the horizon and it made a nice golden glow, went to make a video of it for my girlfriend. After making the video, I watched it, and I found that there were very strange noises on the video, none id ever heard before. Not more than a few minutes later I happened to see a white orb in the sky.. moving closer and closer too me. I went back to my car to grab my phone I had just put away to try and video tape it. The object then moved from coming to me to past the moon, the moon was too bright for the object to be seen on my phones camera. It's twice now I've seen this object.

July 20, 2015 · 12:00 AM · FIREBALL

Centerville, IA

Looking out my window, not an uncommon thing for me to be doing at this time. I looked at a tree in my neighbor's backyard, when I noticed a ball of fire, after noticing this ball, a few seconds after trying to figure out what it was, it moved from the tree, and it went from a ball of fire to a bird with fire wings and fire tail. It flew out of my site.

July 15, 1966 · 10:00 PM · LIGHT

Centerville, IA

90 degree angles uniform stair step flight pattern, very bright light, silent