Sphere over Peoria, IL

The report, as filed

First of all, I am not a night sky watcher, astronomer, UFO hunter, weather tracker or any form of such things. I might watch a UFO documentary once in a while, but I want nothing to do with aliens, both fictional or non-fictional. I happen to know a few of the constellations from school and my father. I saw Neptune through a telescope once, out of state. I know a little bit about weather but this is the extent of my experience with such things. I was crossing a parking lot to go home tonight and I saw a strange man cross my path. I looked up and he turned to look at me. When I realized he wasn’t interested in me, I just watched him for a couple seconds and then something caught my eye overhead of him. When I realized what I was seeing, I turned to see if the man was still around because I wanted to draw his attention to the lights but he was already gone. I looked up to see two reddish-orange orbs flying upward in the north sky. I just stopped to watch them. Usually, there are planes that cross this path going south to the nearby Peoria Airport. The lights were big like the lights of a big plane nearby. They were spaced far enough I thought they were the lights you see on either wing of a plane. Only one problem, there was no plane in-between or attached to these lights. I watched them ascend, in a slight curve and then turn right (my left) and as they went over this one spot in the sky, they dimmed, almost turning white and completely fizzled out. There was a single light coming up from the tree line, same kind of light but single. I watched it ascend, also take a right turn and disappear in the exact location as the first two. But again, before it completely disappeared there was another light ascending. Also, these were doing this as in formation and pace and such. All together, there were the first pair of lights and then 5 single lights after - 7 lights total. Every one of them disappeared in the exact same spot and in the same manner. I was searching my brain for an explanation of what these were: planes, weather balloons, hot air balloons, falling stars, fireworks, comets, Chinese lanterns, helicopters, flares, you name it, I was thinking about it, and ruling each one out. I am colorblind with reds/greens/browns and can see these colors if the brightness and hue and lighting is just right. When Mars was visible people would say, “Look how red it is!” And I could not see this for the longest time. At one point, when it was at a different location, I was finally able to see a faint redness to it. These orbs were very distinct, bright, true color-there was no question what color they were. Because I was coming home from a bunch of errands, I did not have my digital camera with me and I was not wearing a watch. But it was somewhere between 9:00 PM and 9:30 PM and lasted close to 5-10 minutes. I was also questioning how the orbs just disappeared when I saw the first two and thought it was just a plane turning and making it skinnier from the angle. I also thought about the fact that maybe this set of lights went into/behind a cloud. But it didn’t take me long to realize, there’s no clouds! I could see the big dipper to my front left, another constellation (forget the name) to my front right and I could see a cluster of stars and individual stars where these lights kept disappearing. I scanned the sky to see when I would see the lights again and it was evident that when they looked like they fizzled out, that was the last I was going to see of them. It almost gave the impression they went into a door, portal or whatever it was, to make them disappear. I waited after the 7th one for almost 5 minutes to realize that the show was over. The thing too, is that had they turned to make it harder to see them, they would have eventually straightened out and I would have seen them again. This did not happen. I rushed home, set all the stuff down, grabbed my digital camera and went back out there. I waited around another 10-15 minutes; I was hoping to see something again but nothing else happened. I called NBC WEEK 25 to inquire about this sighting and was transferred, but no one answered and it did not go to voicemail to leave a message. I then decided to E-mail them but no one has responded as of yet. I have also been scouring the internet for the past two days, to see if anyone posted this sighting, to no avail. I really want to know if anyone else saw these and possibly know if these orbs are indeed UFO’s or drones or something else. I only know they are nothing I have ever seen before. One last thing I would like to point out is that when I was back out there with my camera, a plane went overhead that was very high-the height of a cross-country flight. And I could see it fairly well, the blinking lights, the movement and such and the orbs I had seen earlier made this plane pale in comparison.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #143136). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.