Flash over Mantorville, MN
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
At this point we were thinking it was just a lightning storm, but the flashes started to turn brighter, and instead of white, they were now green. Freaked out at this point, we were going to the car to drive towards the direction of whatever this thing was. As we were getting into the car, a plane passed overhead, but it made absolutely no noise. It was completely silent. My commute to work every day takes me oast an airport, so I have seen many planes land up close, and I have NEVER seen a plane fly this low and this quietly. As it passed over us, you could feel the force of this thing and it came close to knocking us over. Scared and curious, we finally started driving towards these flashes. After about 5 miles, we could see what looked like a giant cloud in the sky, almost like a hurricane you see on weather radar. Some kind of hole where these flashes were coming from. We park on the side of the road to look, and the plane comes back. Whatever the hell this thing was, it came about 100 yards in front of us, and just hovered. It just hovered and stared at us. Incredibly scared now, we drive back home and went to bed. I am really at a loss of words as to what I saw. Just a side note, our dog was acting incredibly strange all day that day. He hid under the bed which is not like him at all. Source of report indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #137322). 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 2017-09-07 → 2017-09-24
From the same sky