SIGHTING: MT. PLEASANT, IA
Witness Testimony
"Large orange/red fireball appears and travels in sky above and quickly disappears.It was around 11:40 at night on July 16, 2012, in Mt. Pleasant, IA at the Henry County Fairgrounds. A friend and I were talking on the corner of where the main road through the grounds and the road to the east of the project building meet. I was facing north, her to the south. I was listening to her talk and as I was looking at her, all of the sudden, out of nowhere I see a large fireball object in the sky behind her. It was up above the tree line to the north, which if you are looking from the place we were standing, isn’t too terribly far. It was red/orange in color and started to rise up in the sky slowly. It then stopped moving higher up and appeared to be moving closer to us (or farther south) and east as well and was glowing brighter orange. It continued in a sort of U-shape or a half-loop because it kept getting farther south and east. As it travelled this path, the color appeared to pulsate. It then reached a point where it started to get farther away! from us (or back to the north again). As soon as it hit that point where it started to appear to head back north again, it suddenly began to rapidly glow dimmer and stopped the pulsating effect. It faded to white rather quickly right before our eyes, though still very visible at that point. It wasn’t too much longer that the white object appeared to change course yet again, heading directly north and in less than 5 seconds it just disappeared.This whole event was quite perplexing especially since the object was in the sky for no more than 3 minutes. First of all, there was no noise from this object. All day I work around crop dusters and I can hear them from an even farther distance than this object was to us. If it were a helicopter it definitely could have been heard as well. Second of all, if it were a plane or helicopter, why would it be flying in that sort of pattern? If it was a medical helicopter, it certainly wouldn’t be flying that way considering the locations of the hospitals in that part of the state. Third, the duration of this event was crazy. We should have been able to follow this object in the sky a lot longer. It was a crystal clear night! We could see many satellites and other objects in the sky and we noted how slow moving they were, how far away we could see them from, and also how clear and crisp their lights were. The object we saw had no definite shape, no consistent color, and no consis! tent pattern or flashing of its light. We cannot come up with an explanation of what it was.One final event that went on about 10 minutes after the sighting: there were a lot of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other birds in cages in a small open sided building right south in front of the project building (to the west of us). These animals had been quiet all night besides an occasional cluck. But as my friend and I were discussing the event, as I said around 10 minutes afterwards, they just went berserk. All of the livestock were making some sort of noise and it was loud even from where we were! They carried on at the same noise level for close to 4 minutes and all of the sudden just stopped. Absolutely nothing had changed from the time that we had been standing outside other than us seeing that object in the sky, so whatever caused them to get all riled up is a mystery, too.I am just blown away. I have always been skeptical of “UFO’s”, always laughing when shows came on the TV about them or writing people off as crazy that had sighted them or shared stories of them. I know I’m not crazy, so there goes my original theory. I’m starting to pay a little more attention to these occurrences now. My friend has never had any experiences involving UFO’s before either, so she was shocked at what we saw as well. But questions we will likely never answer are why us, why then, and why there? The odds of it happening are unreal and I’m still in shock as to what went on. "
