Circle over Columbia, SC
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Near the end of my pre-dawn walk, I saw high in the sky a bright green ball with a diminishing sparkly red tail move west to east and disappear behind silhouetted large trees. The sight was astonishing! I quickly moved across the road to follow it, but I lost it. This happened just before sunup while the sky was not bright yet. I have never seen this and at first tried to consider a plane, but the green ball was too large and planes do not have "red tails." The tail was not very long, but was definitely in a "pennant" configuration. Comet? Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #145487). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2019-04-01 → 2019-04-18
From the same sky
Related entries
August 19, 2023 · 10:25 PM · CIRCLE
Columbia, SC
The ufo was in the tree line right outside my window the object was too close and fast to be a plane and made no noise from what i could hear in bed. 6 very orange lights in a almost perfect circle moved straight ahead almost seemed like it was heading toward my direction and went past my window. Very strange and looked nothing like I’ve ever seen it seemed too large to be a drone but too small and quiet to be a plane.
July 2, 2019 · 10:25 PM · TRIANGLE
Columbia, SC
A massive triangle shaped object moved slowly across the night sky at what appeared to be 7500 feet in altitude. There was no jet engine sound. Red blinking lights were in synchronized and equidistant in distance. Total area of object at a guess would have been around the size of a city block. The weather was clear and Venus was clearly visible. Object was flying NE to SW.
February 26, 2019 · 6:25 PM · DISK
Columbia, SC
I was outside playing in my backyard and the sun was setting but it wasn't completely dark. When I opened my gate to go to my front yard. About 100-150 feet was a saucer shaped object. It was a metallic color and the hull of the craft looked a light different color. The craft also had a cap on top of it. It was standing still and was shaking a little bit. There was no sound and for about 2 minutes it stood there still. I was in shock and I didn't even pull out my phone to record it because I couldn't believe my eyes. There was a circle at the bottom of the craft that looked like it would lite up. Then it tilted to the side and that's when I saw a part of the top of the craft. Then it went upwards and diagonal west insanely fast. That's when I knew that it wasn't an airplane because it seemed like it broke through the sky because it disappeared so fast. The aircraft looked about to be a little under 20 feet long and about 10-15 feet tall. Metallic color and had three square things at the bottom of the craft. Everything was metallic silver/metal color. The top of the craft had this metal cap too. In between the three bottom square objects was a medium size circle, about 5 feet in diameter. It looked like it would light up but it wasn't. It looked like a white light that went out with a metallic hue over it.
October 18, 2017 · 10:00 PM · FIREBALL
Columbia, SC
I'm not sure if this was actually a UFO sighting, when we all first saw it we assumed it was a shooting star. After a couple minutes went by I was thinking about other shooting stars I have seen and thought this looked a bit different. The closest I can describe it as is being a very bright white, like an LED light, with a slight tint of blue. It was almost shooting out sparks along the outside of the circle kind of like a giant sparkler. Behind the light were bits of a dull red, similar to a bit of smoldering ash. I felt like it was diving down instead of going straight across the sky like you would see with a shooting star. About 10 minutes later me and my wife left. I was talking to her a little bit about it and she had similar thoughts about what we saw. While we were discussing this we heard a helicopter in the sky that sounded like it was heading in the direction that this light was traveling. We were unable to see it. We were out in the suburbs and far from any kind of airport. The fact that we heard a helicopter, in the same area, seemed weird and; made me think that we saw something other that just a shooting star.
August 13, 2017 · 8:30 PM · SPHERE
Columbia, SC
Then in the area of the random flashes, I saw a solid orange small orb emit a beam towards one of the pulsing objects. I watched the small orbs moving very slowly for over an hour, until i went inside for the night.
April 18, 2017 · 12:00 AM · UNKNOWN
Columbia, SC
At about 2400 hours, I witnessed a bright white light hovering over a house in my neighborhood. I was sitting on my front porch listening to music, and since I like to listen to aircraft passing, I decided to pull my headphones off. The strange thing was that there was no sound. This light was hovering over that house for about a minute or so. The light was very bright, but oddly enough, not so bright that I couldn't look directly at it. I'm located in the Columbia area, and I could tell that I was facing north when looking at this object. That bright white light shut off. What replaced that bright white light was a green and red light pattern. It's difficult to explain, but the lights appeared to be one and the same, and yet separate at the same time. This craft still didn't move and I could tell because it didn't appear to be getting bigger or smaller. I couldn't make out the exact shape of the craft, but I could tell it was big. It was like looking into the dark to see a blurry figure and you can't tell the exact shape but you can tell how big or small it was. This thing was huge. I'd say it was the size of a C-130. About 20 seconds after the bright white light changed to the green and red light combination it shot off to the East at a speed that was ridiculous. This was weird because it went from a stand still, to shooting off at such a fast speed. There was no build up to the speed. That kind of maneuver seems ridiculous because that has to be technology I've never seen before that allows an aircraft to go from a stand still hovering position to speeds I haven't seen fighter jets match. It didn't make sense how fast this thing was, and yet there was still no sound. I couldn't believe what I saw so I stood up and looked around for neighbors. I spotted one such neighbor who happened to be an Air Force veteran and we talked a lot because I'm an Army veteran. I asked him if he saw anything weird. He told me that for several nights he saw the same thing. He too said there was no sound to this aircraft he was witnessing. He said it didn't seem like a drone because drones don't move like what he saw and he thought it was weird he never heard any sounds coming from this object. I decided to call Shaw Air Force base. I got in contact with the command post. They said they didn't fly anything over my area. They got me in contact with McIntyre Air National Guard base. They said it could have been an Apache helicopter with "whistle mode" engaged. Now I'm no expert on Apache helicopters, but I have ridden in one before, and I've seen the so called "whistle mode" in action. That doesn't eliminate all sound nor does it explain the speed I saw. Even the person I was speaking with couldn't explain why this thing was so unbelievably fast. I'm not sure what I saw. I don't know what I saw. I just know that I'm a combat veteran who was deployed to Kandahar Air Field (KAF) and I've seen all sorts of aircraft. I've never seen anything like this before. That speed, the way the lights were so weird, the fact I heard nothing and the fact that the outline of this thing looked a heck of a lot bigger than an Apache is something I cannot explain. We spoke at length via telephone with the witness, and he seemed to us to be quite eloquent, and serious-minded. We suspect that he is an excellent witness, and that his report is highly reliable. PD