I want to share a story that my wife and sister in law told me a very long time ago. The reason being that, the story is so strange I’ve always wondered if anyone else out there has seen or heard of a similar event taking place. I am not even sure how to categorize this, call it a ghost story, a UFO phenomenon or a Paranormal or Supernatural event. Not sure, but every so often I bring it up to get more details out of them.

They always hesitate in talking about it, but lucky for us one of them always raises a point the other one had forgotten and they start to debate it back and forth as I hurriedly write down as many details as I can get while prodding them for more specifics.

As the story goes, a few months before I met my wife, her and her sister where in the bedroom they shared. My sister in law Diane claims to have seen it first for a few minutes, before my wife saw it and asked what it could be. Diane claims she was terrified or as she puts it petrified or freaked out when she saw it.

What they describe, and the story never changes although they argue about certain specifics, is a softball-sized, glowing orange globe of light, hovering outside their window. Now, one says it was yellowish, the other one claims it was more orange. One claims it was a pulsating white light; the other one describes it as a glowing orange light. One claims it was softball-sized and it never changed, the other one claims it was more of a baseball sized ball that grew slightly.

What is sure is that whatever it was, it was hovering outside their bedroom window. They both looked outside thinking their older brother might be playing some sort of trick on them, but saw nothing. Now again, they debate on the time and so forth, depending on which one you are inclined to believe, it hovered around their window for around 5-15 minutes. Then it slowly started to rise floating towards the treetops at the back of the house. Now, behind their house is another house but they are separated by large backyards that belong to each respectively. I would guess that between both houses there are at least 400 feet of lawn and an additional 200 feet of trees if not more. The reason I mention this is because it always entered my mind how it might be easy to string something from house to house and fool them. But the distance is too great and the string (although night time) would have been seen in the glow of the light.

Well, to continue the story. This glowing orb slowly climbed higher and towards the tree-tops. According to one of them, it disappeared over the tree-tops; the other one claims that at the time, they both could still see it past the trees and into the neighbor’s backyard. Once the glowing orb passed the trees, it slowly descended back down towards the neighbor’s house. At this point they lost interest in it.

Through the years I have tried to offer some explanations to them to see if they agree or even admit the possibility that there is a plausible answer. From chain (ball) lightning which travels near the ground, to florescent gasses that might be trapped underneath the ground and escaped at that point in time. Their town is known to be on a fault line and I read somewhere that under those circumstances florescent gases might escape and appear to the naked eye as a glowing orb of some sort. My explanations are always shot down with some new tidbit of information or just labeled as “crazy” or completely off the mark.

The fact that they argue with each other and that at the time they where 18 and 16 lends credence to the tale for me. Besides, I’ve known them for many years and they are not the type to make up stories.

This story always interested me, and so I thought to post it on the Internet to see if anyone else out there has had a similar experience or can offer some sort of explanation.