Northeastern United States (exact location undisclosed).Northeastern U.S. · residents film spherical lights at night

Between November 2021 and July 2025, four sightings of spherical lights were recorded, all within a 25-mile (about 40 km) radius, in a sparsely populated rural area of the northeastern United States. One local resident filmed the first three with his phone; a couple filmed the fourth. In November 2021, around 5:00 a.m., the first witness saw a bright light near the horizon. At first it looked like a single, intensely bright object, then resolved into several lights rotating erratically around one another while the whole group drifted from left to right. He filmed it handheld, so the image shook unintentionally.

In March 2022, at 7:20 p.m., the same witness saw two bright red lights hanging near the horizon, nearly stationary. The lower one appeared to rotate slowly relative to the upper one, from the 6 o'clock position of a clock face to a little past 9, in the report's own analogy. He heard no sound. In October 2024, at 6:51 p.m., he saw a light source hanging over a pond, below the horizon. It looked like a "plasma-like sphere" that changed shape and brightness intermittently. At times the main light seemed to split into smaller points, and one of them stayed just above the water without behaving like a simple reflection. The object stayed nearly still for about 45 minutes and vanished without a sound.

The October 2024 video is the only one that, according to the record, was "analyzed and authenticated by the U.S. government." It was cropped to protect the witness's privacy and received no other editing, enhancement or alteration. The fourth sighting was in July 2025, at 9:00 p.m. The witness saw an intense light in his backyard as he parked his car after work, hanging about 25 feet (about 8 m) off the ground. His spouse came out to see what was happening and described it as a "brilliant red sphere" about one meter across, with a core that looked like a white plasma "sun" the size of a basketball. The sphere rose slowly and moved to the left; then they saw a second, identical one above the first.

While the witness filmed with a phone, the two spheres moved off together to the west above the tree line, silently and smoothly, "as if flying in formation or tethered together." As they moved away, both witnesses saw them appear to merge, at about 75 yards (about 70 m).

The FBI's two February 2026 interviews with the couple do not fully agree. The one held in person (FD-302-71) describes a yellow ball of light the size of a basketball and a second, larger one the size of a beach ball, not two red spheres. An agent's note puts the objects about 30 yards (about 27 m) away and 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 m) off the ground. In that interview, one of the two (the redactions do not show which) also said that in 1987 they had seen something strange near a power station and have "always been interested in the topic of UAP" (unidentified anomalous phenomena) since.

The FBI rated the witnesses of the first three episodes "highly credible" and the two of the fourth "credible." The official description of the fourth sighting's video notes that it occurred "within 25 miles" of the previous three, in a location "well known" to the witnesses and sparsely populated.

The FBI's documents on the first three, from October to December 2024, add details missing from the version published by the Department of War, the government agency that released the videos. The witness had installed trail cameras and other sensors and, in the FBI's words, was working to "de-conflict possible prosaic explanations." He cross-checked the times of his sightings against public air traffic records (ADS-B) to see which could be aircraft. He said he had seen spikes in gamma radiation that matched the sightings and odd effects on electronics and GPS data, and that it was "common to have corrupted video" when trying to record them. The documents disagree on how long he has lived at his home: since 2006 according to one, since 2021 according to another, which adds that he previously lived about five miles away.

The FBI's October 2024 interview with the witness of the first three episodes (FD-1057-04) also records a 1996 account of a vehicle that shut down under a light in New Mexico; because of redactions, it is not clear whether the account is his or that of the person he had discussed the sightings with.

In November 2024, two FBI agents visited his home and saw from the patio white lights pulsing at the tree line and a white light above a red one moving fast at treetop height. In a daytime survey in early December they found nothing unusual on the ground or in the treetops. They noted that several houses to the east had a line of sight to the spot, and judged it "unrealistic" for anyone to fly a drone there at night without hitting tree limbs. The Department of War published the four videos and these documents on June 12, 2026, in the third release of its PURSUE document-release system.

Four sightings in four years, within the same 25-mile radius, reached the FBI, which found the witnesses credible; the government also authenticated one of the videos. In the most recent one, the witness's spouse confirms the essentials, although their interviews differ on the color and size of the spheres. In November 2024, two agents saw lights in the same area.

The FBI's rating concerns the witnesses' credibility, not the nature of what they saw. No source makes this general argument, but stationary or slow-moving lights at night, silent, seen with the naked eye and filmed on a phone, with no instrument to measure their distance or size (rangefinder, compass), allow conventional explanations that cannot be ruled out without more data: high-altitude balloons with LED lights, civilian drones with position lights, Venus or Jupiter near the horizon, or paper lanterns, whose slow ascent and warm color match several of the descriptions.

Journalist Micah Hanks of The Debrief proposes that last reading for the 2025 video: what "looks suspiciously like candle lanterns" drifting with the breeze. He adds that the footage resembles a video released the year before by an aviation-safety advocacy group ("in fact, it may be the same video"), which was also quickly assessed as sky lanterns.

Some details fit that reading less well. The slow rotation of one light relative to another, the splitting of one light source into smaller points and the "merging" of two identical spheres are not typical of a single balloon or drone; by the same reasoning, a conventional explanation would need several coordinated units or an unusual atmospheric phenomenon. The official note on the 2024 video does not say what the authentication checked, and it does not claim the phenomenon was identified.