SIGHTING: ALEXANDRIA BAY, NEW YORK (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My family and I were staying at the Edgewood resort in Alexandria Bay, NY. At approx. 9:45 PM on Saturday 8/29 I had left one guest room and was heading back to mine, and decided to walk from our building to the main building to get a bottle of water. The main building was east and slightly south of the building we were staying in.While walking to the main building I noticed a bright red light in the sky to the NE. It was brighter than a star, and appeared as slightly larger than a point, possibly circular or spherical. It seemed to flicker or pulsate very slightly. By its appearance I thought that it was fairly close, maybe a mile or so away. It was moving very slowly to the north when I first noticed it.My first impulse upon seeing it was that it was possibly a low flying airplane fairly close by, however it was quickly apparent that this wasn't a plane or helicopter. There were no additional lights, and this one red light was brighter and more substantial than the typical appearance of the light on an airplane. As mentioned, the light also had a slight flickering or pulsating appearance, so my second assessment was that maybe this was a military flare of some sort, particularly given the close proximity of Fort Drum. I stopped to look at it for a moment and ponder that possibility, but a couple of things about the object made me doubt that it was a flare. First, it had been moving slowly north since I first noticed it, but soon after I stopped to look more closely it became completely stationary and maintained the same altitude that it had when I first saw it. I made it a point to find a light pole to use as a stable frame of reference, and verified that the object remained stationary for at least two minutes. Second, I have seen military flares on various occasions, and there was no sign of smoke around this, or of a parachute above it, no sign of sparks, etc. And I have never seen a flare remain so perfectly stationary. Third (though this was determined after the sighting was over) the object appeared to the NE of my position, and Fort Drum was SE or even S of my position, so if this was related to a Fort Drum maneuver it was taking place well outside of the Fort Drum perimeter. At this point I felt a bit excited about seeing this, and thought about going back to get someone in my family to take a look. Before I did that, I wanted to make sure that this wasn't possibly a light on a tower or antenna of some sort, so I walked around behind a tree and the main building to get a view of what was beyond. There were no structures beyond that were tall enough to account for this, and none of the structures had bright lights on them. When I walked around back to my original location and looked up, the object/light was gone. I moved around again to various different viewing locations/angles but there was no sign whatsoever of the light. The time between when I had looked away and then looked back to see that it was gone was no more than 30 seconds.In conclusion, I admit that I am something of a UFO enthusiast, but I am also skeptical and inquisitive by nature. I am not the kind of person who sees an airplane at night and immediately thinks I am witnessing an alien invasion. I spend a decent amount of time looking up at the night sky, so I know what various commercial and military aircraft look like, what satellites and orbiting spacecraft look like, how to recognize various astronomical objects, etc. This particular sighting was out of the norm enough to get my attention, and doesn't seem to match anything mundane enough to where I would say with any certainty that I could explain it. Of all the possible explanations, I would say that it most closely resembled some kind of flare, with the exceptions noted above. I would definitely be interested in knowing if anyone else reported this, since this was pretty early on an active night in a fairly popular resort town, and this was definitely bright enough and near enough to where I would expect someone else to have seen it."