Cylinder over Ball Ground, GA

The report, as filed

The witness had turned on the outside light to let his service dog out to "do his business" and the motion-activated ring camera came on showing a one minute clip of the dog reluctant to move out in the yard, then looking like it saw something. At the end of the clip light reflects off of the man's glasses twice, then the RC shuts down. Right at that point a very bright light (like an arc welder) from a rectangular probe-like object about 12-15" wide and 6-8" vertically was observed by the witness, for about 20 seconds. Witness felt object had thickness and solidity and that the light “panel” was actually on a solid cylinder-shaped object. Although very bright, it didn’t hurt his eyes to look at it, which he found difficult to describe. The light also had a “moving-ripple-like effect” to it even before it moved, which he attributed to a reflection effect off of the stainless-steel chimney cap (which had a pattern of vent holes across it). When first seen, the object was stationary, but then began to move very slowly to the right (west). This took it briefly behind the chimney. The object was about 60-foot away and about 3 feet left of the chimney at first and about 50 feet up, or 20 feet higher than the roof. The witness' Apple iPhone 11 was unable to lock on the target to take a picture. This witness just happened to be the Operator of MADAR node129 at Ball Ground. At that time the site was not DAS-equipped (alert klaxon) but the node hadn't triggered anyway because it's shield or threshold was set at 25 milligaus and the magnetometer reading never got that high. However, the one-minute data lines showed some irregularities. The magnetometer had spiked and compass heading changed 5 degrees while the object was present. IC (Investigation Concluded): Unexplained.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #170055). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.