My husband and I were sitting on Sunset Beach, NC 8:50 pm July 3, 2016 waiting for fireworks to start in distance on Ocean Isle Beach, NC. At 9 pm fireworks began and kind of disappointingly looked pretty far away from our vantage point. These are southern facing beaches so we were seated facing more easterly to observe fireworks. We both noticed what we thought a small plane at first in distance as it was moving very slowly in our direction.. thinking whoever it was had great front row seat observing fireworks from air. As it turned out we ended up watching this "plane" as much as the fireworks, cause there was just something about it that didn't seem exactly right.. kinda glancing equally back and forth at this plane, then the fireworks. Not too many other people on beach except for big family with kids and they were in front of us just watching in direction of fireworks and jumping around. No one else seemed to notice this thing or mentioned it as they were all intent on looking at fireworks. Well next the distant fireworks took total back seat to us as we became much more interested in this object. which was obviously NOT a plane as we had originally thought.. as it moved closer to our location. It was fairly high up but we quickly determined that it definitely wasn't a plane.. could plainly see that. It moved extremely slowly and then became apparent as a reddish orange glowing object and we both said what the heck IS that?? No plane could stay in air moving that slowly and there was no engine sound of any kind.. totally silent, and no actual lights as you would see on a plane.. just a combination sphere-starlike solid reddish orange glowing brightness. We had never seen anything like that before and could not take our eyes off of it. Let us be perfectly clear...THIS WAS NOT A FIREWORKS! It was a very bright object moving in a straight path from Ocean Isle Beach to Sunset Beach a bit back from the beach coastline... not over ocean. It then hovered in place high above but practically right over us, and we thought maybe a drone? it moved side to side and back and forth a bit but mainly hovered in place. Then all of a sudden it moved backwards and just seemed to hyperspace away quickly into the clouds! The way it backed up and vanished is beyond what any helicopter could do.. and like I said we heard absolutely no sound from it!! Never imagined anything could move that fast.. like an instantaneous reverse disappearance. Never saw it after that remained on beach awhile longer in hopes it would reappear but did not. Now cant stop thinking about it. Unfortunately did not get any photos. We contacted our son who is a pilot to tell him what we saw and he did not think from our description it would be a drone, or a plane which would have blinking lights.