SIGHTING: SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"Disclaimer: i'm not drawing any conclusions as to what these were, i'm open to all possibilities. here is an explanation of what we're looking at because the video really doesn't do justice to how these things were moving: these are 7 videos put together that stretch between 7:06pm - 7:22pm on 8/10/17. i first noticed these things in the sky while walking out to my car around 6:50pm. there were a dozen or so, high up, and looked to be moving like balloons or lanterns. living close to the beach and the pier, i see a lot of balloons and lanterns so i'm familiar with them. anyway, i ignored them at first because i was in a hurry to move my car. by the time i finished (around 7:00) and walked back down the path the numbers of them in the sky increased by another couple dozen - and there were a number of them quite low to the ground. at this point i thought: advertising stunt of some kind (we get those a lot in la too). it wasn't until i got back to my door that i saw a whole "fleet" of them coming in on what looked like a flight path (disclosure: we are close-ish to lax and the santa monica airport and i'm familiar with the flight paths - you'll see a number of planes in the video). as if they were coming from the upper atmosphere (over the pacific) and down towards pico blvd essentially. at this point i thought "skydivers" or "flares"... and went inside and grabbed my binocs. when i looked through the binocs (i have two pair, one with a stabilizer one with extra magnification) i expected to see lanterns, flares, balloons, or even drones or skydivers. instead what i saw were sparkling rings of smoke that had some shape and apparent structure, but they spun like tops in the sky as they moved. they almost had a jellyfish type body that seemed to pulse and was translucent. once i pulled out the binocs and saw this, four "zoomers" (what i called them) buzzed down from the sky (above the palm tree in the long shots for reference) and skimmed above the roof of the building directly in front of me (only a couple hundred feet in altitude). they were silent, and moved incredibly fast (way too fast, as you'll see) to be a lantern or balloons - and then they climbed in elevation after buzzing the roof. i was alone, though my neighbor saw it as well. i should have gotten more people outside to be honest. mistake on my part. but these clips in the video are broken up because i was going back and forth between filming and watching through the binocs. i stated this in the video, but will say it again, this video does not do justice to how many of them there were in the sky. it was a constant flow, on a "flight path" seemingly of these things for 30 minutes or longer. it lasted a long time, and had to be seen by more than me. i slowed some of the clips down at the end, the one zoomer i got and another slow motion vid of how they move in the sky (you'll see it tumbling @ the 1:51-1:57 mark). time stamps: first thirty seconds are kind of tough, showing the higher altitude ones that had just buzzed me :40 second mark you see some new ones coming in, lower and closer. :55-:57 mark you can kind of see the movement (like balloons) as well as the pulsing. 1:51 - 1:57 mark you will see one moving across the top, spinning, it gives you some of the shape 2:11-2:17 mark you can see more movement (these are new ones, not the same as the ones above) 3:15-3:26 mark good shot of one close, moments after it buzzed the path i was standing on, moves like balloons... but way faster and they're glowing. 3:33-3:52 mark has another one dipping low, then a zoomer (the only one i got on film, but there were several others) that flew past real fast. this one is slowed down at the end and zoomed in as best i could. *4:35-5:21 mark has three more coming in on the "flight path". by that i mean, you see how they're high in altitude and moving lower. that's how most of them came in, in a straight line from that high altitude and then down where they spread out, then reformed into a line and moved on at a lower altitude. this also includes the description of these things. thanks for your time."