Sighting: sunday, july 16, 2017, 12:15 pm location: south main historic district, memphis, tn circumstance: alone in parking lot direction: to ssw at ~70° altitude text: at 12:15pm, having taken out the trash, i took note of the mostly sunny sky and the many starlings overhead despite the heat. at first, i thought one of the birds had gone bat-sh*t crazy, doing aerial acrobats in a relatively small piece of the sky, then realized it was within too small a window of the sky even for a starling if a bird could indeed behave this way, then realized it wasn’t flapping at all, then fast realized that what was the size of a starling at about a hundred feet was actually much farther away just above the height of one of the sky’s few cloud-bases that was alongside. this dark object was the equivalent of half an inch at arm’s length. (when i later pulled the mem (memphis intl airport) stats from globalair.Com at 1:07, it read “ceiling is broken at 4900ft”, which put this thing at ~5000-6000ft altitude.) it must’ve been quite large. i knew it wasn’t a bird, but wondered if an airplane or balloon – indeed, anything – could move in this manner. then, i saw the first flare of brilliant turquoise-white light, bright even in broad daylight. it repeated within a few seconds. wanting a better look, i retrieved my 12x binoculars from inside the house. the object had risen perhaps 1000ft at this time but was very clear through the binoculars. the object was pitch black, silky smooth, and completely non-reflective, even in direct sunlight. the shape was a rigid, flattened v at an angle of ~100°, just slightly larger than a right angle. there was no apparent fuselage, the wings (?) were not tapered at the ends but instead ended with blunt 90° angles, as two rulers joined at an angle by their ends. the light flared again, clearly from the nose (?) of the object, though the nose was otherwise as black as the body, no notable windows/cockpit or even light source. note: the light did not abruptly “flash”. it was “flaring” from the nose sporadically, about once every 5 to 20 seconds and for a duration of ~1-2 seconds, so bright that it obscured the view of the craft when looking at it and always in the same turquoise-white hue. the exterior was otherwise featureless with no discernible seams or anything that might pass for wheel wells visible. there was no visible engine or exhaust, just a solid, flat v. but the oddest characteristic was the object’s behavior within a small column of the sky. it cartwheeled and somersaulted all over the place by no apparent means and with no apparent intent, mostly rising, sometimes not, sometimes falling a bit. overall, this chaotic movement allowed display for detailed study, but it made for a rather slow climb. i couldn’t imagine a plane that large doing that without coming to pieces or any person enduring the ride even with the highest dosage of dramamine. i observed these continued maneuvers through the binoculars for some five to eight minutes, seeing the craft settle and still for some few seconds only three or four times over the duration. otherwise, it was constantly tumbling in all directions, as something out of control, the light sporadically flaring. the object had risen much nearer the caps of the clouds alongside before i thought to run back inside and grab a camera. when i returned, the object was no longer visible, and i was unable to locate it again over the following 20 minutes of observation in any direction. i did, however, take notes immediately after, as well as draw a picture that afternoon (attached if i got this thing to work properly), and quickly check the airport’s atmospheric conditions through globalair.Com, which were: few clouds, ceiling broken at 4900ft, clouds broken at 25,000ft, wind from 030° at 11 knots, and 10 statute miles visibility. given this information, while i’d first spotted the object at ~5000-6000ft, i’d last seen it at ~20,000ft when considered in comparison to the cloud data, and it had still appeared quite distinctly in the binoculars, though harder to locate with the naked eye then. it may be that, when i returned with the camera, the object had simply surpassed the window for naked-eye spotting and been lost to higher altitudes. given the altitude as compared to atmospheric data, i would ballpark the width of the object at 130ft (+/- 20 ft), with a length of 65-75% of the width, and a height of about 1/10 – 1/8 of the length. due to the erratic behavior, i couldn’t tell you which side was the top or bottom. after the sighting, i was quite calm. during, i was rather excitedly trying to observe and memorize as much as i could of the event. note: the drawing illustrates the strength and source of the light. otherwise, the nose of the object was as pitch black as the body. this black was neither shiny nor dull - more like a hole in reality, a void cut out of the sky.