SIGHTING: WEST SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (UNITED STATES)
Witness Testimony
"This is the 4th UFO I've witnessed, 1 in 1981, 1 in 2005, 1 in 2014, and 1 just now. I am a licensed private pilot, who loves aviation, so my eyes are always turned skyward. I was in my house just now, at 3:02 am, and I heard a helicopter flying over my house very loud. After it passed over my house about 5 times, my curiosity got the best of me and I went out to my back yard and using my night vision scope, I saw it was a Bell Jetranger III helicopter flying in circles of a diameter of about 1 mile. Each time it came around, it passed directly over my house at an altitude of approximately 700 to 900 feet. The sky was completely clear, moonlit, with no clouds or haze. I sat in my lawn chair and watched the Bell fly over approximately 20 times. I blinked a flashlight at him during his final few passes and he responded on only one of those times by flashing his red and green navigation lights on and off 3 blinks. I thought that was pretty cool! I watched him pass over from east to west and continue his usual circle to my north. As I watched him come around to the east and begin to approach my house again, I noticed a glowing orange light, which appeared very high in the sky, about 3 or 4 times the size of Mars, slightly northeast of directly above me. For an instant I thought "man, that's a huge star!" But then I realized it was glowing orange and moving at a high rate of speed. If you've ever seen a jetliner at 32,000 feet leaving a white contrail in the sky, this object was traveling about 5 times faster than that... very slow compared to a shooting star, but VERY fast compared to a jetliner at altitude, or any military jet for that matter. The object was silent and left no visible trail that I could distinguish. The object had no red and green navigation lights, no flashing white strobe lights, and no rotating red marker beacons, so I know it wasn't an airplane... at least not one from earth. If the object was huge, then it was way higher than a jetliner's 32,000 foot cruising altitude... maybe even in space. If the object was small, it may have been only a few hundred feet off the ground... well above the trees. I don't know it's exact altitude, because I don't know it's exact size. All I'm certain of is that it was a glowing orange light that was moving VERY fast! It moved in a direction of approximately 80 degrees, so east-northeasterly. I watched it until it was out of sight near the east-northeast horizon. It was in my unobstructed view for about 30 seconds, moving in a straight line. I don't think it had anything to do with the helicopter, and I don't think the helicopter pilot (pilots) would have seen it or even been aware of it. What I mean is... I don't think the helicopter was there looking for the UFO. I think I just happened to be outside looking up and enjoying a helicopter when a UFO happened to fly by very high in the sky. The helicopter made two more circles over my house before I saw it return to the St. Paul downtown airport, which is about 1-1/2 miles north of my house. So I came inside and was marveling at what I had just seen and then I thought "I wonder if that was the International Space Station?" So I went online and saw that at 3:02 am, the ISS was at 41.64 north by 15.22 west, which is about 10 miles off the west coast of Spain. I'm calling this a UFO because it was an object, it was flying, and it was unidentifiable by me, a trained pilot, as being any sort of aircraft I have ever seen flying at night, and because it was moving incredibly fast! I don't think it was a satellite because I've seen many satellites moving through the night sky throughout the years, and they all appear brighter white... lit by the sun, and much slower as they move through space. This object was glowing orange and moving FAST! "
