Unknown over Steger, IL

The report, as filed

From the patio of my home looking south I spotted an object in the sky with red and green lights. The 2 red lights were blinking sequentially and the green light was steady and seemed to cover a larger portion of the object perhaps covered a section of it. It's very hard to tell the altitude of the object. There are common flight paths coming from the Midway and O'Hare airports to the north and other flight paths going to and from other regional airports, so I am very familiar with seeing them come and go. They behave in a predictable manner. This object was primarily hovering at first. I saw at least 3 jets traveling at various directions at the same time as observing this object. One jet flying south passed either directly over or under this object. With naked eyes it's clear that the object was meandering, easy to notice when referencing trees and other land objects. When I realized this object was not ordinary I went inside and got my phone to record this object. The night sky recording is far inferior to my eyes and did not focus well on the object for most of the recording. The camera also did not pick up the trees or nearby homes to have a reference for altitude or size. I did think I heard a sound from the object. It was hard to tell as the house is close to railroad tracks that are way too busy with train horns and passing train car rumblings. But, it seem the camera did pick up a droning of some kind, either a faint prop or an indeterminate whooshing sound that seemed to wax and wane. The object was stationary but them meandered east and then north which eventually placed it directly above my home where I was standing. Unfortunately this was exactly when a train began blowing its horn and disturbed the sound recording. At this point the camera was able to focus a little better to see the red lights more clearly as they were blinking sequentially, and the solid green light underneath or to the sides. In the darkness the camera is not good enough to focus on the object itself but only recording the lights on it. After the object passed overhead and further east it changed direction to the south again and then to the west, over the forest preserves. It proceeded far into the western sky until I could only view it deep into the tree line. At that point it changed direction again and flew N/NW which again kept it basically flying over the extensive forest preserve area. It kept on that course until it vanished behind the tree line and presumably out of my horizon line of sight. I am not that familiar with drones and my suspicion was that it perhaps was a drone or perhaps a sort of helicopter but I've seen and heard many helicopters flying over this house and they are much louder and they fly along a straight path. If it was a drone it seems it was a pretty advanced one to fly at night and that high and far from a possible remote control. The forest preserve parking areas it flew over were all closed at this time of night. If it was controlled from a town neighborhood area that would be about 2 miles away at its closest. It is worth mentioning that just one block south of my home there is a cell tower. I tried to use that tower's height to estimate the altitude of the object and that's assuming the object was smaller than a single engine plane. I'd estimate the object's altitude was at least 1,000 feet but again depending on its size maybe much higher, or maybe a bit lower, but if so not much lower. I am almost sure the sound I heard briefly was coming from the object. I think if the pilot of that commercial flight that passed over that path looked down they'd have seen the red and green lights. If this object was inside the flight path I think it might have been seen on the control tower radar, but again I am not very familiar with these protocols. addendum: if I knew the maximum size allowed for uploading a video i would try again but after 3 edited videos and 3 failures to do so it's not going to happen I guess.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #173157). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.