The Light

     I moved to Balsam in the fall of 2003, finding myself alone in a small house. I was only a few yards from the house of my best friend from childhood, and just down the hill from his brother, another close friend. This situation allowed us to see one another fairly regularly, and it wasn't unusual for everyone to congregate in one house for poker or video games or a movie. One summer evening in probably 2005, my friend, his wife and his brother and I were all sitting on my front porch.

     The sun was going down to the west, and the horizon was a beautiful palette of oranges and yellows. I looked to the southwestern horizon, and saw a large red-orange ball. It was probably the diameter of a pencil eraser held at arms length. I caught the attention of the rest of the group, and everyone stopped to look at this unusual light in the sky. The sun had slipped a little further down, so the bright light was in stark contrast to the darkening sky behind it. We watched it intently for about ten minutes.

     At this point, I had begun to think that it was possibly just a very bright planet on the horizon, maybe Venus. I slipped inside to grab my telescope, a cheap Meade that I had picked up a year or so prior. Just as I began to adjust the scope to try to look at this supposed planet, the light began to move rapidly across the sky towards the north. It grew in size until it appeared to be about the size of a dime in the sky. It's margin was ragged, giving the appearance that it was on fire. Within a few seconds it had moved far enough north that it was out of sight behind the tree line. It was completely silent for the duration of the sighting.

     I spent the rest of the evening trying to work out what I had seen. The planet hypothesis was clearly out, as planets don't tend to move rapidly across the sky. The duration of the sighting rules out a meteor. It's possible that it was a plane, as odd as that seems. If it had been heading directly for us, it would have appeared as a point of light, especially with the sun illuminating it from behind. Once it changed headings, it would have moved rapidly from our field of view. The flaming effect could have been simply a mirage as the light traveled through the atmosphere, and the lack of sound can be explained by the distance. This is the explanation that I've settled on. While it doesn't fully satisfy me, it does seem to fit the circumstances of the sighting. This is important for me; to understand that as much as I want it to be something odd, it may well not be. Or maybe that's what the aliens implanted in my brain during my abduction. Who knows?