REPORT SUMMARY:
During the early hours of a 2015 morning, a man travelling along the Thornhill Road, just outside Dungannon, spotted unexplained orange lights which caused him to stop and get out to observe their erratic behaviour.
FIRST NAME
[Withheld]
LAST NAME
[Withheld]
GENDER
Male
[Withheld]
DATE OF BIRTH
[Withheld]
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO REPORT?
UFO Sighting
DESCRIBE THE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Calm, Cold, Frosty, Clear, Dry
WERE YOU NEAR ANY OF THESE?
Moor/Farmland, Rural area
WHEN DID YOUR ENCOUNTER HAPPEN?
12th Feb 2015
APPROX TIME OF ENCOUNTER
02:00 Hrs
DURATION OF ENCOUNTER APPROX
5 Minutes
COUNTRY OF ENCOUNTER
Northern Ireland
LOCAL AREA OF ENCOUNTER
Near Dungannon
WHERE THERE ANY OTHER WITNESSES?
No
IN YOUR OWN WORDS, DESCRIBE WHAT YOU SAW.
“The date is an approximation unfortunately because it happened a long time ago and this is the first time I have reported it, but the date is a required field so I had to put something to progress. I was travelling along the Thornhill Road near Dungannon in the early hours of the morning when I stopped my car and got out because I seen some strange lights in the sky. It was a bitterly cold night with a starry sky and I couldn’t see any clouds. The lights looked like amber/orange orbs that were glowing very brightly, and the light seemed to be emanating from the material it was made of and there was no flare, like as if it was made of red hot metal. They kind of looked like miniature versions of the sun. I would estimate they were about 2000 to 3000 feet in the air but it was hard to tell. They were almost directly overhead but slightly in a north westerly direction. They were moving around erratically and turning on and off. At most I seen about 2 or 3 at any one time, but I’m not sure if there were more of them or if I was seeing the same lights turning on and off. They were moving around the same area of sky which would have been an area slightly smaller than the palm of my hand held at arms length. The orbs themselves would have been approximately the size of my finger nail held at arms length to give you an idea of scale. I don’t believe these were flares because of the way they moved and because there were no smoke trails. I don’t believe they we’re Chinese lanterns because they moved in different directions and they were turning on and off, unlike Chinese lanterns that I have seen that move straight across the sky in a linear fashion. They also didn’t look like meteors which I am also very familiar with because I’ve seen everything from small shooting stars right up to a very large fireball which was visible in broad daylight. I don’t think it was helicopters because there was no sound. So I don’t know what they were unless someone has other suggestions. At the time I knew of flying saucers and other different shaped UFOs, but I did not know that orange orb type UFOs were a thing, much less that they were a fairly common type. Upon later research I have found that the descriptions of the Phoenix lights sound very similar to what I seen, except that the lights I seen appeared to move independently of each other rather than in formation, and I couldn’t tell if they were attached to something.”
PLEASE SELECT...
I wish to remain anonymous.
Investigator comments:
What the witness describes here is very unusual in the sense that satellites and Chinese sky lanterns don’t fit into his description here. The account is very detailed, which we appreciate, and gives us a great idea on what the event looked like. If something was there, I feel confident enough to rule out the above mentioned possibilities. Taking flares into account, I don’t know of any flare that turns on and off and moves erratically and counter to the direction of other flares, where, when launched, burn brightly and slowly in the sky as they slowly descend on a small parachute and get carried in the wind, and I’m not aware of a military training estate in that area and feel the location is far enough away from any significant bodies of water where flares would be of a maritime origin.
Also given the length of time the witness observed the event, we can confidently rule out a meteor too. Unfortunately, due to the length of time between the event and receiving the report, we can’t go far enough back into flight data records and, after searching through archived reports, we see no other reports from this time from the same area.
As of now, this case remains unexplained.
Hynek Classification:
Nocturnal Lights
