Oval over Gastonia, NC

The report, as filed

Spotted as I was coming down Dixon, it was ahead of and above me on that road, traveling or rather tumbling and was emitting a dark red light from within. It looked transparent and seemed to have small points of red light within it. The inside area of the outer shape seemed to be illuminated, which is what made me think its light was internal And coming out of a transparent object. I’ll try to draw something and attach it, but I’m no artist at all. There was no discernible sound, but there was some general noise from traffic around me. The craft was oval or oblong, an odd roundish shape that was either changing or tumbling as it moved smoothly in a straight line. Its edges weren’t static, but also not undulating - this is very hard to describe. If you could imagine a sentient blob from a Hollywood movie, more round than any other shape, and it’s exterior was bulging or being pushed out from within slightly but constantly in various directions, it’s like that. But it also appeared translucent and not solid. I just now remembered a cartoon from a couple decades ago called Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which has a character called Meatwad. It kind of moved like Meatwad does in that show. Not undulating, but tumbling, if a YouTube clip of that character may better explain the type of similar motion I saw on this object. I turned North onto Burtonwood to whip into a church parking lot so I could jump out of the car away from most of the trees. Jumping out, I now noticed the single-engine prop plane which appeared initially to be following it as i was turning into the parking lot was now farther from it. I considered my initially seeing the two together may have been a forced perspective and that the plane perhaps wasn’t following it, and they were at two different altitudes and going in two different trajectories. If it’s possible to research small aircraft air traffic in that area at exactly 8:07p on Oct 11, 2023, then it’s also possible that pilot or any passengers may have also seen it. In the 20 seconds or so of me trying to get into the parking lot and out of the car to record it, it had already moved a considerable distance and now appeared much smaller, and had turned from the deep red to an almost white color. Looking at my included map, I first saw it above Dixon, just 50’ or so to the west of Burtonwood, traveling NNW over First Presbyterian Church. It was heading towards, and then across, E Garrison Blvd, and the Middle School. As it was crossing over E Garrison, I could still see the ‘tumbling’ but now instead of it looking like it had originally, with dark red lights within that were initially visible and with the craft appearing translucent, now the craft itself seemed to be a solid not-bright white color and was still on its same path it had been from when I’d first seen it. It disappeared behind the trees as it crossed over the William P Grier Middle School and there was no way I could’ve tailed it with the amount of traffic and red lights and stop signs all around that area compared to its speed. And, as per what is apparently necessary to occur in practically all of these events, my iPhone 13 Pro’s camera, which was designed especially for videography and creating movies, was stumbling all over itself trying to decide what to focus on with so many things in its view. Zooming in didn’t help much. The larger white blob in the video is the object, the Cessna is now appearing above and much farther from it than it had just moments before. If their respective altitudes in the vid are correct, then the object would have possibly been too far below them for any occupants to see it but, again, initially it looked to me like the Cessna was right behind it when the object was red. If an investigator would like to contact me, you may do so with my included information. ATTACHED MEDIA: In the attached map pic, the yellow egg is me traveling W, then cutting N on Burtonwood for a clear shot away from trees. The red egg is the craft when I’d first seen it, the blue line it’s trajectory. The white egg is where I next saw it after jumping out of my car to record, before it disappeared behind trees at the middle school. My attempt at drawing a rough shape of the initially-transparent craft is attached. Imagine a smooth yet ‘moving’ slate gray outer surface, with dark red light reflecting on the inside of that outer ring, and points of light inside. How it can be transparent so it appears as a hollow-yet-3D ring to me, with depth and lights inside it and moving around - it defies anything I’ve ever seen before and is confounding And frustrating to attempt to describe. In the attached vid, you can see the Cessna now some distance away from the object, where just moments before it appeared to be tailing the object which was perhaps my mistake from a forced perspective of the aircraft and the object. Then again, it’s also possible the Cessna was tailing it then suddenly became concerned and veered away from it. I hope this information is helpful, as it’s the first object in the air that I could not identify since the last one I’d seen back in 1997, so I’ve had a very very long dry spell. Thanks!

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #178826). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.