Sphere over Charleston, TN

The report, as filed

At 8:00pm Eastern time on 2/23/2018, my husband and I were driving in southeastern Tennessee, north of Cleveland, TN, and approaching Charleston, TN, on Hwy 11, about 2 blocks north of the intersection of Hwy 11 and County Road 308 on the outskirts of Charleston, TN. We saw 2 orange glowing basketball sized objects rising at a 45 degree angle toward the north and then leveling off and traveling northward. I pulled into the local grocery store parking lot to get a better view and pulled out my cell phone to take a video. We spotted a 3rd and then a 4th object and could see these were flickering lights. I drove the immediate area and spotted a family launching Chinese lanterns from their backyard so the experience was explained. We watched two more lanterns rise, taking the same path up and northward as the previous ones. All spheres were a flickering orange color while below 250 feet elevation but changed to white as traveled further away. I was amazed that these lanterns followed the same path of flight and even wondered if they were powered by drones, but my husband felt they were getting too far out of range from the family for this to be. We never saw any descend, they just kept going northward and faded from sight. Anyone traveling on I-75 around mile marker 35 (where I-75 crosses the Hiwassee River) could have viewed these east of I-75 as unexplained glowing objects in the sky, so I thought I would report my findings and give you an explanation of the event.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #138925). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.