Bright white light.

I have no pictures and no video, the only way I could have got a picture is if I had a camera stuck on my head and I wish I had.

1. 9.2012 (Sep 1st) 9:30pm. BST (British Summer Time)
NE England, about 10 miles south of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

I stood at my door looking up at the cloudy sky thinking I'm not going to see this blue moon, when I noticed a flashing red light in the distance to the north. That would have been a plane coming in to land at Newcastle airport so I watched it till it disappeared from my sight.

As I turned to come inside, there it was, a huge bright white light right in front of my eyes. It was just across the road and just above the roof tops. It was the shape of a cigar but with housing on top.
It was a solid shape, not blowing around in the wind. It was about as long as three houses and at its tallest point it was almost as high as a house without the roof.
Important to note that NE England terraced houses are not very big although I have seen smaller.

As it flew off into the distance it just looked like a bright white orb, I'm not saying it changed shape, just that I couldn't see the shape in the distance. I watched it until it flew out of sight, it didn't seem to be travelling very fast but it was gone in less than a minute. I didn't hear any sound.

My thoughts at the time were, Wow just for me, but no, it was so big and so bright I can't be the only person to see this. It felt like a party boat, as if the occupants were having a good time. I can't explain why I thought that, how would I know? It was just a feeling I had at the time.

It travelled from between SW and WSW to between NE and ENE. it's important that I have the correct directions so feel free to check that I didn't get confused. When I stand at my door, I know that north is between 1 O'clock and 2 O'clock, the light travelled from 9 O'clock to 3 O'clock.

Warning ... you might not want to know this. I don't know if this is connected or not, but I was up through the night throwing up.

So the first thing I did was to Google plane tracker, this was an automatic reaction even though I knew it wasn't a plane, anyway there were no planes at that time. The plane I had seen would have landed by then.

The next thing I did was to Google Hadrians Wall because I knew they had the wall lit up that weekend, using coloured lights inside weather balloons, yes, I know what you're thinking. That's why it's important that my directions were correct, if you can show me my directions are wrong I will accept that it was a weather balloon, but right now I don't believe it was.
From what I could see they just used the balloons to light up the wall, they were not letting them fly away. The wall is more than 10 miles north of me.

If a balloon had broken free from the wall, it would have to travel south for me to see it, this light was not travelling south. Would the balloon have taken the light along with it? Would it keep a solid shape as it moved through the sky? I can tell you, there was no odd bits hanging off it where it would have been attached to the wall.
There was nothing to make me think it was a balloon, but I knew about what was happening at the wall.

I didn't see anything on the news about this light and I kept looking here to see if anyone had posted about it, but I found nothing anywhere. I click on every UFO thread hoping to find a picture of this light but I haven't found one yet.

For those who live in this area I'm putting a list of just a few places to give you an idea of where you might have been able to see it
Between Consett and Tow Law, Annfield Plain and Maiden Law then on towards Stanley and Beamish, then between Kibblesworth and Birtley.

If you can convince me that this was just a balloon, I will still have the memory of how it felt at the time. This was a fantastic sighting for me but knowing the truth is more important.

About the shape, the cigar shape was almost 1/3rd of the height with about just over 1/6th of it sticking out at each end. The housing on top was slightly curved at the front then it was straight along the top, the back of it was also straight but sloping outward from top to bottom. The lines of the shape were blurred by the light and all I saw was a light.
My sizes are all guess work, it might help to know that if you have a theory about this.

Interesting. The nausea does add another dimension to it I agree. Unfortunately, like so many of us, you're probably gonna be left wondering for a loooong time.

Thanks for sharing such an interesting account.

reply to post by The GUT

Thanks for your reply, I expect you're right, I might never know. This is the best place to be though, if people here don't figure it out I will be left wondering.
I wasn't sure if should have added my crazy thoughts to it or not.

Interesting and sincere. Just to clarify, how many degrees clockwise from the direction of that wall did you see the object at the beginning and end of the sighting? This is to help rule out a false image of the wall related to a temperature inversion. If it remained in line with the wall, then you should ask your local weather service if there was a temperature inversion capable of bending light and creating a superior image. You might want to ask them anyway, because there might be a some other distant facility with a lot of lighting that could be projected by that kind of weather phenomenon. It is often something beyond the horizon that appears to be floating in the sky in such cases. (Check Yahoo! or Google images for Fata Morgana).

I assume that if it were a blimp with malfunctioning advertising lights you would have recognized it as such.

A meteor moving away from you but actually a hundred kilometers or more distant can sometimes look large and close and seem to hover only a kilometer or less away if its course is virtually parallel to the ground. This is partly dependent on a quirk of the way the brain processes images of distant objects near the horizon (the moon illusion).

reply to post by xpoq47

Well you're way over my head, I thought I left no room for questions, I was wrong. The wall stretches right across the north of England, I'm a good 10 miles south of the East end of it. The whole of the wall is north of me.

The houses across the road where I saw this light are about 20 to 25 feet away, it was that close to me.
It didn't move in line with the wall at all, it was moving towards the wall.

I have to confess that I have never seen a blimp in my life but I'm guessing they wouldn't just look like a light or be the strange shape of this light.

I'm hoping that members from my neck of the woods will pop in (I know there are some here) They might be better than me at explaining where the wall is.
I do know this wasn't a meteor but I'm not sure if I answered your question.

reply to post by LEL01


Okay, well, it sounds like a serious sighting, then. If it were in the U.S., one could file official requests under the Freedom of Information Act for both FAA and weather radar data for the area and time of the sighting, which has to be done within 15 days or something like that. Then a UFO organization (MUFON) can get a radar expert to go through the data and map the flight path of the object. If you just call and ask a government agency, they'll say they didn't see anything, although in one case the U.S. Weather Bureau did respond positively to the police in Ohio. In another case, the U.S. Weather Bureau confirmed that the official explanation (a weather anomaly) given to and accepted by the press wasn’t possible for the timeframe and location in question. If you file a report with a UFO organization and ask them about radar confirmation, they might file the request for you and take it from there.

reply to post by LEL01


When I first read your report my initial thought was it may be a Blimp , it wasn't this one as it was put to bed in August but the video bellow shows how a cigar shaped object can appear to become orb like (@1.00 on video)

I'm not saying this is what you saw but did it look anything like it ?

reply to post by xpoq47

I guessed that you were not in the UK from your questions, I'm not a sceptic in any way but knowing the wall was lit up with balloons right across the country is the only thing making me question my own sighting. I've lurked here for so many years that I've seen loads of believable pictures and videos debunked. So I'm not so quick to believe even my own sighting, but I know what I saw (or do I?) This was very low down, if it had been any lower it would have hit the houses but at least then I would have known if it was just a light or something more solid.

ETA. Rethinking the distance of the houses across the road, it could be up to 30 feet away but thats still very close to me.

reply to post by gortex


Thanks for the video, while I've only ever seen blimps on TV and the internet I'm quite sure that's not what this was. I have a feeling they are more common in your part of the world.
Using my imagination I would guess the length of the blimp could be about right but not the shape. The cigar shape was even in size at both ends, the top part was a bit like some boats have (I don't really know what to call it) a cabin. I'm not sure how else I can explain it.

reply to post by LEL01


The bulge on top you mentioned we call the bridge. That’s where the helm (pilot’s station) is located. On a blimp, it’s on the bottom and called a gondola, and getting that close to residential rooftop raises the danger of banging the gondola against a house.

Once a boy about 12 pointed skyward and said to me, “Hey, mister, look, a UFO.” It had just gotten dark, and I couldn’t see the body of the blimp, only its array of light that were supposed to spell out the name of some product but was on the fritz at the time of the boy’s sighting. But I recognized what it was and explained it. It was an altitude of about 1,000 feet at the time. I saw it again several times on subsequent days and evenings in the same area with the advertising array working.

reply to post by xpoq47

The bridge, of course it is, my mind has a habit of blanking things out. I put it down to age. Thanks for that picture, I didn't know about the gondola part of blimps. There was nothing at all hanging from the bottom of my light, if there had been it would have hit the houses.
I've been thinking, if only this had happened a minute or two earlier it would have crossed paths with that plane I'd seen, then there would have been loads of witnesses although that might have caused an accident.

I put this in the "Recent UK 'Meteor'- something doesn't add up" thread but thought I should add it here also. Apart from a meteor sighting about 12 years ago, my sighting above was the first time I'd seen anything really strange, because of that sighting I keep looking out but not really expecting to see anything again.

I had a sighting around 9pm On the night everyone in the UK saw a "meteor" I put the kettle on and looked out of my door. Looking NW. I could see 2 or 3 little red lights dancing around way up high in the sky, I couldn't make out what I was looking at so I made my cup of tea then looked out again. They were gone but a few houses down it looked as if there were flames sticking out the sides of a chimney, That would be NNW. I'm guessing this was some distance away and my view was blocked by the houses. I'm not sure if these were both the same thing or not.

I heard on the news that kielder observatory had a sighting at 9:20pm that night, other sightings of the "meteor" were around 10pm and 11pm

reply to post by LEL01


i thought id bring it here for reference for your thread if thats ok

sorry i was a bit confused but it has sunk in now
i too have seen this with my own eyes many times
big reddish orange one the other night that just
missed a plane and veered off to the east
from chester
sometimes my kids point them
out to us

ps
im glad im now on the same page so to speak
S+F
COOL encounter/sighting

reply to post by maryhinge


All white orbs in the distance look like my sighting, in the distance. It's the close up pictire that would be different, the close up would probably be called a fake because it just isn't what we would expect to see. This one was close to the speed of my sighting or at least the speed I thought it was going.

reply to post by LEL01


I want to make a correction to my OP.

I have been thinking that something was not right there about the Blue moon because I thought that was the second moon of the month. It turns out I was right, the Blue moon was on August 29.

Only I could look out for something so rare on the wrong night, but the good news for me is that I did get to see the Blue moon, I just didn't know it at the time.

I put it in my OP because that was the reason I looked out and I had to tell you the weather was cloudy anyway.
I feel better now that I put that right.

About 1:30am on Tuesday 10.12.12. I was looking out at the sky not really expecting to see anything again. A large white orb appeared then just disappeared quite low in the sky to the north, then a few seconds later it happened again but a little higher up in the sky. It was as if somebody had flicked a switch on and off a couple of times, it was very strange.


I know I'm just talking to myself here but somebody might take an interest one day.

wow interesting story buddy

reply to post by BeyondTheUnkown


Thank you for your reply (and for stopping me from talking to myself for a moment)
I have sent an email to Hadrians Wall just to be sure but I have not had a reply from them.
Having a second sighting while there was nothing going on in the area makes me even more sure what I saw was not a weather balloon.