Sphere over Wilmington, NC

The report, as filed

In late November / early December of 2017, I was living at a student living apartment complex at the intersection of Randall Parkway and S College Rd, Wilmington, NC 28403. I am 23 years old now, and was about 20 years old at the time. My one other witness to this event is my roommate (K) at the time, who was about 25. I remember this day pretty vividly as it sent me into a bit of an obsession for months after this happened. I first assumed that what we saw was military since we are coastal. I will relay what happened as best as I can. I had never considered until recently what we saw that evening could’ve been ET. About 4:30 / 5 PM - K and I are going to a gas station up the street. We turn right from Pepys Ln, left onto S College, and go to the BP on the right side of the road. This is just barely off of UNCW campus. K goes into buy beer since I am underage, and we set back for the short .3 mi journey home. We were sober when we left for the gas station, and had been all day. Neither of us have hallucinogenic or delusional mental disorders, and have never seen anything like this. I am driving, and turn left back onto S College, and K and I almost immediately see a rather large aircraft. It was hard to tell at first glance how close it was and the size, but it didn’t take long to realize that it was flying at about the same height as the stoplight we were approaching. It was so low. I then noticed that it was dark grey/black, the size of a typical sedan, and was spherical with short wings extending from the sides. The shape was honestly hard to decipher because I had never seen any type of craft designed this way, and definitely not this close to the ground. I remember hearing a low whirring. I think that it may have had two propeller sort of mechanisms underneath the wings. I couldn’t tell if it was big enough to be manned or unmanned. K and I were both yelling at each other to make sure we were seeing the same thing. Without having to say much at all, we were both in awe of what we were seeing, and also terrified. I needed to get in the right turn lane at the light (S College/Randall) to get us back home. Along that turn lane, vehicles could turn earlier into a Rooms To Go parking lot that was across from where K and I lived. I wanted to try snd keep looking at what we were seeing, so I quickly turned into the RTG lot. It seemed like the craft noticed me, and it made a ~45 degree turn with minimal effort, and immediately went in the direction of Randall Pkwy over the RTG building. I saw when it turned that it almost went belly up, and I couldn’t tell how it gained momentum so quickly. It moved away from my vehicle at what I would guess 45/50 MPH, after hovering right above S College Rd barely moving for a solid 20-40 seconds. I was so in shock of what we had seen, as was K, that we agreed to immediately call the non emergency police number to try and make any real sense of it. We were still at this point convinced we had seen some kind of military UAV/drone/etc, but I have done extensive research and have not seen anything remotely similar to what we saw that day. The police officer I spoke with asked me if I was being held against my will by somebody and if I had taken any drugs (lol). I knew it sounded ridiculous, but we are both clear on what we saw that day, and have not found any answers that point us in the direction of what it could have been.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #164529). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.