Burning object, droping pieces while hovering?

A number of years ago about this time of the year I was walking home with a friend around 11pm and he pointed out this circular shape in the sky. It looked like it was on fire. Not just red or orange in color but actully flaming. It was pretty far away at the time. No clue how far, but it didn't seem to be moving. We sorta hurried up and got to my place and then watched it from there. We noticed it was getting bigger and from our perspective, looked to be going right above my street. It looked about 7 blocks away or so. So we went In to get my dad. Because at this point we could see little flaming pieces falling off. In the few minutes we were In side it moved and was basically even with the house. You could see chunks of different sizes breaking off and burning out or up before they hit the ground. My dad just said oh that's cool. And went in. After he went in it seemed to hover for another five minutes then we watched it pick up speed and get faster and faster till t disappeared from view. Have no clue what it was nor did anyone other then the 3 Of us see it.

Edit. I live in a smaller town. Of about 14,000 people. My neighborhood is alot of retired people. They are in bed by like 8. None of them that I mentioned it to Where even up at that late

Have you asked your dad what he remembers from that night? It would be interesting as it seems to be quite a low key reaction to something so odd!
Or is your dad just cool like Fonzie?

reply to post by davespanners


Haha. He is pretty cool, much like the fonze. Well he's not much into the weird stuff. Just like, yup. That's odd. And goes on with life. He's very practical.
But ya. I'll ask if he rembers

A obvious answer would be a Chinese lantern that caught on fire , however I cant imagine it would stay in the sky that long . Strange.

reply to post by bluemooone2


I might be wrong but I don't think Chinese lanterns were very popular (outside of the far east) before the last year or so. I certainly never heard of them until recently

Chinese lantern that catches fire falls immediately. I should know. Bought a pack of 20, have about 6 left, only saw one actually fly away. The rest dropped like flaming stones after a minute or so in the air. I need some lessons in how to fly them.

Interesting sighting. Not the first UFO I've read of that has flaming bits falling off. I wonder if they're unstable in some way?

reply to post by bluemooone2


Yeah, that makes sense but we saw it for awhile. Not postive but i'd say around 15-20 min. Cuz when we first saw it we were about half way home and thats atleast a ten minutes walk. But we kept stopping to look at it.

reply to post by wigit


Cool thanks for the info, I know jack about Chinese lanterns. Yeah ive heard stuff about them dropping stuff aswell, seems like it would be on purpose, if I made something that was that hi-tech I think I woulda found a way to keep the warp core stable

Im not wanting to cry "aliens!" on this, just have allways wondered what the heck was it!? So any and all possible explanations are great guys

I just braved the elements to go see if I could get a idea how big it was. seems to me if you held a quarter at arms length, it was a little smaller then that. Thats going off memory, but It seems about right, I remember it seemed pretty big. Big enough you could tell it was fire and not just colored light

reply to post by deanyo


Any chance it could have been a military flare? I know they have some that can stay aloft for a while, move with the winds in the upper atmosphere, and depending on what fuel they're using (or testing) I could see how it could possibly look the way you describe ("dripping" burning chunks).

Might be worthwhile to do a little research into any military activity in your area and, specifically, that night. The military cats are good about keeping records, it's getting the to share them with you that can be tough...

Springer...

reply to post by Springer


Ahh, good idea!
Joint Base Lewis-McChord is about 45 minutes north from me. I didn't think about them though, they aren't usally down in this area, except for the occasional C-130 off in the distance. Would the flare be capable of moving from one direction to the other, like south to north though? I don't know much about flares. But It seems it would have to have covered alot of distance from what we saw.

Nevermind, You added what I was trying to ask haha, thanks my friend!

My mom saw something like this in 1989. She described it exactly the same way.
It must have been late Spring/ Summer because it was around 7/8 PM.
(for fellow listmates in San Antonio who might be reading this, it was over North Star mall by Foleys & moved down toward Oblate & was to the east of San Pedro, over the residential area). It was pretty low, not real far above the roof line of the mall (which is 2 story at the place where she first saw it). I don't remember if she estimated how big it was or how it was moving (ie drifting, moving fast, or what) or why she stopped following/ what happened to it.
Anyway, she called a local weather guy (Steve Brown at KSAT tv) & he thought it was a prank- something having to do with kids setting garbage bags on fire (which we really didn't believe- I *think* because it was too big & also we thought it would have burned away before it could move that far, but I just don't know re size). I'll ask my hubby if he remembers any more details about it.
I've seen similar things (same description) posted on nuforc a few times in the last 5 or 6 years. (no speculation from Peter Davenport)
I hope somebody knows what this was.

reply to post by DogsDogsDogs


Well the gentleman above suggested a military flare of some sort, Now I didn't see what you guys saw in Texas but that seems logical for what I saw.. so for now I'm going with that. But still intrested in other answers

reply to post by deanyo


Heres a clip of some different flares etc that can be used..

See if any look like what you saw

reply to post by davespanners


Ehh, kinda. The stuff I saw moved slower, hovered and moved again. and so forth, it would stop and go many times. Also the junk falling off was more erratic in size, shape and how often it fell. Way more sporadic then any of the flair videos, I also looked at some more on youtube. Close but not quite. not saying it wasn't a flair, just nothing else I could see that was quite like it. Thanks for the link