SIGHTING: MESA, AZ

Witness Testimony

"Flying object seen in MesaI went out on my balcony to have a smoke & saw a bright white light to the northeast of me. It slowly moved behind a tree out of my sight for about 5 minutes. I stood up and walked to the other side of my balcony & saw the light again. It slowly moved to the right, and then up. After a few seconds it started moving back to the right. very slowly. Once it had moved to directly in front of me, but it seemed to be a mile or more away from me. At this point i stepped inside to call my husband outside. When i did that it started moving quickly toward me. By the time my husband made it outside it was a VERY bright white light, almost like a spotlight pointed toward us. It flew straight toward us and red lights started flashing on both sides of the craft. It was directly above a shopping center in front of our apartment, i'd say about a football field (maybe that far) in front of us. It turned direction, towards the left (west) and flew silently ahead until it was out of sight. When it first turned, i could see a row of lights (dim) along the bottom side (almost middle) of the craft. You could tell it was metallic and it seemed to have what looked like rocket jets shooting orangish light out of them. They were on both sides of the back of the craft, in between the red lights. The whole time it never made noise. It was eerily quite for the city. My husband and I just looked at each other & commented on how strange it was.((NUFORC Note: Confirmed high-altitude research balloon. PD))"