SIGHTING: VANDALIA, OHIO (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"I was taking photographs in late evening because around sunset the clouds tend to show up in beautiful formations. that night they were primarily brilliant white against the still-bright blue. i had been taking most photographs facing the west/northwest and south, but turned to take a few photographs facing the east and northeast. i didn't see anything other than sky and clouds (and houses and trees) while taking the photographs. later, when i looked at the photos on my phone, i noticed a black dot in the upper right corner of one of the photos. after zooming in as much as i could, i realized it was what i thought was a bird in flight high above the horizon. i couldn't tell what kind of bird, except that it seemed like it would have had to be large and it was black. i showed my mom the photo, wondering if she could tell what kind of bird, and her best guess was an eagle. i didn't think to look at my bird photo again until later that night, after actually seeing a completely different, but also unknown, object in the sky which i was able to record via my iphone's camera (that object was in the sky to the north/north-west, and was first seen by my father who then called my mom and me out to see it). after seeing the flying object later that night, i decided to take a second look at my bird photo from earlier, remembering how large it seemed in proportion to the rest of the photograph and thinking i might as well take a second look. i transferred the contents of my iphone's photos in internal storage to my laptop (which has a large screen and an excellent zoom capability!), went through the photos and finally came to the bird photo and when i zoomed in, i was no longer certain it was a bird; whether that's because of what i saw in the sky subsequent to taking this photograph or because it doesn't actually look like a bird, i don't know. (it may very well be a bird; but, that's why i'm submitting it to you!). the photo i'm submitting along with this report is what i call my "bird photo"; however, there was identifying information (address visible) in the original, full photograph so i simply kept the original aspect ratio and cropped the photo so that information was no longer visible. i tried to keep enough of the photograph visible so that some sense of proportion will be preserved."