Light over Prince Frederick, MD
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Around 5:50 pm on 1/6/23, I looked up to the sky. There was cloud cover, but a circular white light appeared and was visible behind the clouds. Because of that I would estimate it was the same distance from Earth that an airplane would be. It moved quickly in an erratic zigzag pattern for less than 5 seconds and then disappeared. There was no beam between it and Earth like I would have expected if it had been a spotlight of some kind. After the initial sighting, it reappeared less than 30 seconds later in the same location, and moved in the same pattern, again for less than 5 seconds, and then disappeared. There was an airplane that went by after the second appearance, but it seemed lower in the sky than the ball of light.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #173768). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
Ask for the records
What would the paper say?
For a dated, located U.S. sighting, FAA radar data and ATC communications are the records most likely to exist. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2023-01-03 → 2023-01-20
From the same sky