SIGHTING: HALEAKALA NATIONAL PARK, HI

Witness Testimony

" White, translucent sphere seen on the road up Haleakala Crater, Maui, HawaiiAt 4:37am HST Tuesday, September 23, 2014, we were driving up Crater Road to the summit of Haleakala on Maui to watch sunrise for the Autumnal Equinox. It was a new moon with nearly no light in the sky yet. It was a clear night full of stars. As we rounded a switchback to face East North-east, we saw what looked at first to be a moonbow directly in front of us. At that point it looked to be “rising” from behind the mountain that we were driving up. If one compared it to the size of a full moon high in the sky, it would be 100 times that size. Once we pulled the car to the side of the road, we realized it was a sphere, rather than a two-dimensional semi-circular object.It had a thick, white, glowing rim that was the thickness of a typical rainbow. Using the “full moon in the sky” size reference again, the white glowing rim was initially the thickness of two full moon’s diameters, side by side.We noticed that the walls or “inside” of the sphere was a translucent white.In the two minutes since we’d first seen the sphere, it had grown – either by expanding or coming nearer to us…we can’t be sure of the perspective. It had slowly, smoothly grown in size, doubling and then tripling as the “wall” of the sphere came closer to us.We took several pictures as the sphere approached, getting larger (timestamped at 4:53), and there is no sphere visible in those images on either my iPhone or my friend’s camera. The cameras captured the lines in the road and the road signs, but absolute darkness otherwise.The sphere enveloped us. That is, the translucent wall approaching us and moved past us – over us, through us – and as soon as it did, we could not see the sphere anymore – neither it’s translucent walls nor the thick white, glowing rim/outline. In that moment, the wind stopped blowing (had been 20-25mph) and ambient sounds ceased. Then, the night sky returned to how it had looked before we initially had seen the sphere; wind and sound returned to normal.In reviewing the data on my JawBone UP 24 (fitness band that tracks my walking motion), we spent 25 minutes out of the car, walking/moving (4:39am – 5:04am). That was a surprise to me. My friend and I agree that to our memory, the entire episode lasted 5 minutes.After watching the sunrise, we stopped at a breakfast spot on the way down the mountain and overheard a tour bus operator asking people if they’d seen “the giant orb”. We shared what we’d seen and it was the same experience in terms of what it looked like and that it seemed to expand or get closer. At the time, we hadn’t yet realized our experience with loss of time (I discovered that while looking at some data points while writing this account), so we don’t know if that driver had a similar experience. We did not think to get his name.In coming down the mountain, my friend and I both noticed that everything we saw and heard seemed to be in “high definition.” That is, colors in nature – plants, flowers, etc. – were (and still are) oversaturated. We’re more sensitized to sounds and tastes. I’m not sure what to think of this experience, and so post it here as a possible step in making sense of it through others’ insights, or perhaps similar experiences.Mahalo "