A Short History of Orange Orbs
What exactly is an Orange Orb? The short answer is that no one knows. Yet it is one of the most ubiquitous of all anomalous aerial phenomena taking place in our skies today.
Debunkers will tell you it is ball lightening or flares attached to helium balloons by hoaxers or Chinese lanterns released by party goers. That may be true in a handful of cases but can either fly at over 800 miles per hour and stop on a dime or hover for hours in a terrible wind? Is it common for military jets to chase Chinese lanterns and helium balloons? And then there is the apparent intelligence that seems to accompany these orbs. They merge, they separate, they form geometric patterns like triangles and rectangles and star constellations, they blink out and return and some alleged contactees even claim telepathic communication with them.
Conspiracy theorists will suggest they are plasma ball weapons being developed by DARPA or some other U.S. Government Agency. Boeing Phantom Works is rumored to be working on these Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) for the military but maintaining large plasma balls suspended in the atmosphere for hours or guiding them on trajectories in groups of up to 30 at speeds faster than the speed of sound is still science fiction at this point. Yet it is happening in our skies with or without Boeing’s participation!
The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) will not classify them as Unidentified Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and requires Field Investigators to label them as “Unknown Others” in their reports. When searching reports, MUFON doesn’t even use the term orb. The closest you can come to a classification in their database is circle or sphere. Yet if one goes to the MUFON sighting database (and anyone can, dear reader) there are reports on a daily basis flowing in from around the globe and even some with some very good video evidence to back up the sightings. Are they technological craft, some sort of biological entity or a little bit of both?
To be clear, these utterly silent Orange Orbs traipsing about our skies are not to be confused with the small paranormal orbs often seen in photographs surrounding people in cemeteries and supposed haunted houses. These are objects of advanced technological capability yet on occasions when they have been seen close up they seem to be molten pulsating blobs of energy or biomass with faint outlines of something possibly mechanical but almost invisible about them like a shell.
In 2008, the British Ministry of Defense released their so called X-Files and among the generous amount of information released was this nugget about Orange Orbs:
“That Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP or UFO) Exist is indisputable. Credited with the ability to hover, land, take off, accelerate to astonishing velocities and vanish. They can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamics characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile – either manned or unmanned.
The Conditions for the initial formation and sustaining of what are apparently buoyant charged masses (of Plasma), which can form, separate, merge, hover, climb, dive, and accelerate are not completely understood.
Dependent on a color’s temperature and aerosol density, it may be seen visually, either by itself generated plasma color, by reflected light, or silhouette by light blockage and background contrast.
Occasionally and perhaps exceptionally, it seems a field with undetermined characteristics can exist between certain charged buoyant objects in loose formation, the intervening space between them forms an area, viewed as a shape, often Triangular, from which the reflection of light does not occur. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently been called black “Craft”, often triangular and up to hundreds of feet in length.
And while sightings of these orbs are proliferating all over the globe especially in the past two years, their presence is not new. Some researchers believe them to be incarnations of the famous and mysterious Foo Fighters seen over the skies of Germany by Allied pilots in World War II.
In his 1954 book, ” Flying Saucers on the Attack”, author Harold T. Wilkins recounts the harrowing WWII episode of U.S 415th Night Squadron pilot Lieut. David McFalls 20 miles north of Strasbourg, Germany on December 22, 1944:
“At 0600 (6 pm) near Hagenau, at 10,000 feet altitude, two very bright lights climbed towards us from the ground. They leveled off and stayed on the tail of our plane. They were huge bright orange lights. They stayed there for two minutes. On my tail all the time. They were under perfect control. Then they turned away from us, and the fire seemed to go out. “
Newspaper clippings from all over the world harvested by UFOlogists like Cris Aubeck and Jacques Vallee clearly show evidence of an Orange Orb presence in the 19th and early 20th century long before Nazi scientists and engineers were harvested by the Americans after the war for their space program. So one an not conclude Foo Fighters were secret weapons of Russian, German or American design.
In the India Gazette of July 1832, we receive the following report of orange orbs:
Meteors of 23rd June and 24th July 1832, observed at Delhi and Meerut. An extraordinary large meteor or rather three balls of fire at first rose out of the Est Southeast horizon on the 23rd of last month, and after rising to an elevation of about 15 degrees joined into one forming a large ball of brilliant fire nearly as big as a full moon in the meridian and passed over an arc of the heavens aboutb 115 degrees before it vanished in the West Northwest. The light was very brilliant.”
And on October 2, 1907 in Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania the exact same occurrence happened as follows:
A remarkable story is told of a phenomenon in the heavens last night about 6:30 that is vouched for by the foreman of The Star (the reporting newspaper) and a friend who witnessed it. While they were standing talking near Frank’s Tavern a brilliant golden ball of fire appeared suddenly in the northern part of the sky, remained stationary just a moment and then dividing itself into 3 distinct balls of almost equal size of brilliant and flaming beauty moved slowly and with graceful downward curve across the sky. Except for its gigantic appearance it resembled the appearance of a sky rocket with its beautiful play of bright colors. As the three stars moved over the sky a pale lambent trail was left in their wake much resembling the description of a comet. The mysterious stars disappeared behind the eastern horizon… “
Again in the Kapunda Herald, Australia of March 16, 1880 it is recorded that:
A resident of this town informs us that a strange phenomenon occurred on Monday morning March 15th. At five minutes to 4 o’clock a star appeared to be burning brightly in the north-eastern heavens about 45 degrees above the horizon. Immediately afterwards it shot with immense rapidity towards the southwest but became motionless while still high above the horizon. It burned fitfully with a reddish glare for a quarter of an hour and then slowly set in the southwest as brilliant as when it first appeared.
There is even a mention of orbs in April of 1676:
“In Offenburg a comet has been seen, which looked like a flaming sword with the blade pointing to the west. Alongside it was a star and two bloody red spheres”.
Source: Extraordinaires Maanedlige Relationer, April 1676
Even the U.s. Air force Project Sign (AKA Project Saucer later Project Grudge later Project Bluebook) has a letter from Major General Cabell (Air Force head General Vandenburg’s second in command to dated November 3, 1948 to a Colonel McvCoy inquiring about UFOs. Colonel McCoy responds on November 8th specifically stating:
“The objects described fall into the following generl calssification groups according to shape or general configuration.
a.) Flat disc or circular or approximately circular shape.
b) Torpedo or cigar shaped aircraft with no wings or fins visible in flight
c) Spherical or balloon shaped objects
d) Balls of light with no apparent form attached
It is item d) that we are concerned with!
Lake Erie, in particular, has been a hot bed of sightings as early as 1867 with the Native American tribes in the area calling them Wizard Lights suggesting an even earlier presence there. So let’s begin our investigation here in Lake Erie.
Enter Michael Lee Hill 2006
Beginning in 2006, a musician named Michael Lee Hall who lived near the shores of Lake Erie began to video tape Orange Orbs appearing in the skies. His videos are clear and crisp and plentiful. Check them out on YouTube. Michael, to some in the UFOlogy community, has diminished his status by his unsubstantiated claims that he is an alien hybrid descended from the Annanuki with special blood. That blood was sent for analysis by Bill Birnes on the now defunct UFO Hunters television program and returned with certain extraordinary results that in no way prove he is alien – just rich in an enzyme called Creatine Kenase which some UFOlogists consider a trademark side effect of an abductee’s experience.
MUFON also investigated his Lake Erie Orange Orb sightings and concluded they were merely airplanes Michael was filming. This conclusion was subsequently vigorously challenged as Lake Erie is a no-fly zone since 9/11 because of the Perry Nuclear Plant on its shores near Cleveland.
Enter Robert Bigelow 2010
Michael Lee Hill has made some extraordinary if not outlandish claims on many UFOlogy blogs, web community pages and TV shows but one is very interesting and somewhat plausible. He claims that in 2010 an investigator for Bigelow Aerospace Corporation named Gary Hernandez contacted him concerning his orb sightings requesting that Michael divulge the coordinates of his orb sighting locations. A search of LinkedIn.com reveals that indeed a Gary Hernandez with an extensive law enforcement background did work for Bigelow as an investigator on “Classified Projects” from 2010 till 2011.
If the claim is true it casts Orange Orbs in a whole new light. Robert Bigelow is a billionaire real estate developer from Nevada that made his fortune with his hotel chain holdings. His aerospace company has launched two modules for the International Space Station. He sees a future for his company in space tourism. Mr. Bigelow also has an interest in UFOs. It stems from childhood when his grandparents were almost killed in their car evading an Orange Orb in their path. His now defunct National Institute for Discovery Science collected UFO sightings (especially Black Triangle sightings) until 2004.
In 2009, Mr. Bigelow entered into a much maligned and ill-fated financial partnership with MUFON (a non-profit) which quickly came undone. Mr. Bigelow also owns the infamous Skinwalker Ranch which is a hot bed of cattle mutilations and Orange Orb sightings. And an even more telling fact is that the Federal Aviation Administration now defers UFO sightings by pilots to Bigelow Aerospace.
The point of all this is that we have a billionaire aerospace tycoon apparently interested in the coordinates in the Lake Erie Orange Orb sightings. If they are just airplanes like MUFON says – why? If Michael Lee Hill is a charlatan – why?
Perhaps it is an attempt to intercept and retrieve one especially if it were extraterrestrial technology? That’s why!
Enter Terry Ray 2014
Terry Ray is a MUFON Field Investigator from Pennsylvania. I met him at the Pittsburgh MUFON Conference in October and he is a very nice man. Terry wrote a book this year with a very, very long title called “The Complete Story of The Worldwide Invasion of Orange Orbs” available from Sunbury Press. It is a three part book beginning and ending with his investigation into the phenomenon sandwiching some 200 actual reports submitted to MUFON and elsewhere in the middle of the book.
Perhaps Terry’s greatest achievement in his investigation into the phenomenon is his sighting map based on thousands of MUFON Case sightings over the past few years. Terry has determined that these orb sightings are increasing exponentially and that they are visible over every major American city in an apparent attempt to be seen by as many people as possible. Their objective, it seems, may be to slowly acclimate humans to their presence if indeed they are extraterrestrial. They avoid one city completely however and that is Washington D.C. Are they avoiding confrontation with our military? Would Chinese lanterns and helium balloons with flares attached be so discerning?
Terry also believes these orbs come from underwater bases and that they are frequently seen along the Atlantic Coast on their nightly maneuvers and seen also (not surprisingly) en masse over Lake Erie and Atlantic Ocean locations like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.!
Terry believes they are extraterrestrial and that seems to be the growing consensus.
I am a MUFON Field Investigator and of the 50 odd cases I have investigated this year about 40% have been Orange Orb sightings over New Jersey.
MUFON Case 5937 on August 14, 2014 is perhaps the most sensational I have worked on although there is no video or photographic evidence. The object when far away was clearly an Orange Orb. The object was first seen at close range by the witness at no more than ten feet away. It was a churning glowing orange globule suspending itself in mid-air with the faint outline of a bell around it almost invisible to the naked eye. The witness gave specific dimensions to it being about 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide. It was shaped like a bell or a jelly fish. It hovered near an outdoor electrical transformer just outside her back yard possibly in an attempt to siphon energy off it. When it became aware of her presence it began to back away and accelerate up displaying sentience and awareness of her presence.
On August 24, 2014 MUFON Case 59219 witnesses in Ouachita, Louisiana described the same object as seen in NJ in Case 59379. They stated “My wife and I noticed an orange see-through bell shaped object about 200 to 300 feet above the ground, headed north then turned 90 degrees east. No sound at all, watched it until it disappeared.”
The witnesses drew a very accurate diagram of the bell shaped plasma ball.
When comparing case 59219 and 59379 to Michael Lee Hill’s initial 2006 encounter with the Orange Orbs we get a strikingly similar description of an Orb close-up. Michael stated it looked like a top hat and being more specific he added: “It looked like a flat platform made of glowing plasma red, you could make out the edges very well, they were not blurry. On top of this platform sat what looked like a glowing sun, kind of like a ball of plasma that was around the size of a small plane. The ball was about 1/3 the length of the bottom part. Just picture a line with a ball on top and that is what it looked like, the line part about ten feet thick I would say.”
Three close encounters with Orange Orbs and all very similar. They seem to be balls of churning energy with a faint outline of something larger surrounding that energy. The outline is large and flat at the bottom and smaller and rounded as you progress towards the top.
It may be coincidence but on December 9, 1965 in Kecksburg Pennsylvania just such an odd shaped object crashed in the woods outside of town attracting a quick and overwhelming military response. Whatever the object was, it was carted away on a flatbed truck never to be seen again.
And another even more intriguing coincidence emerges from the realm of conspiracies about bell shaped orange orbs. In 2000, Polish weapons expert Igor Witkowski published a book entitled “The Truth about the Wonder Weapon.” It details his experience speaking with a former Nazi SS Officer named Jakob Sporrenberg who tells Mr. Witkowski about the now infamous Nazi experiment called The Bell (Die Glocke).
What Die Glocke was and whether it ever really existed or not are questions for debate but when taken in the context of bell shaped Orange Orbs in our skies travelling in truly mysterious circumstances, one must wonder if the Nazis were indeed working on some sort of transportation platform using exotic technology possibly reverse engineered form a purported crashed UFO in Germany before WWII. If Mr. Witkowski is to be believed, then many German scientists lost their lives contributing to this experiment. Additionally, it is assumed that it fell into American hands at the end of the war. Was The Bell an advanced propulsion system or something even more exotic like a time machine as has been suggested? Was Die Glocke the object that crashed in Kecksburg in 1965? Was Die Glocke the object seen in a New Jersey backyard in 2014’S MUFON Case # 59379? We don’t know but we see patterns emerging.
One more case to make a point. MUFON Case 57701 from July 5, 2014 in Eatontown, NJ. The witness asserts that after seeing an Orange Orb cross the sky “Within a few minutes, multiple fast moving aircraft were seen flying in the same direction as the unidentified object flew.”
Eatontown, NJ is just north of McGuire Air Force Base. The Air Force is adamant that they don’t investigate UFOs yet time after time we have apparent jet fighters scrambling after UAVs in MUFON database reports. This has been going on since the 1940s and they never seem to catch those things!!!
So how long have they been here? A few centuries or a whole lot more?
Over 3,500 years ago in ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Thothmosis III committed to papyrus an account of possible extraterrestrials in his skies as follows:
“In the year 22, of the 3rd month of winter, six hour of the day, the scribes’ archivists or chronicles, or annalists, of the House of Life found that there was a circle of fire coming in the sky… (but) it had no head. From its mouth came a breath that stank. One rod long was its body and a rod wide and it was noiseless. And the hearts of the scribes became terrified and confused, and they laid themselves flat on their bellies…
They reported to the Pharaoh. His Majesty ordered… has been examined… and he was meditating on what had happened and which is recorded in papyri of the House of Life.
Now, after some days had gone by, behold, these things became more numerous in the skies than ever. They shone more than the brightness of the Sun and extended to the limits of the four supports (quarters) of the heavens…
Dominating in the sky was the station of these fiery-circles. The army of the Pharaoh looked on with him in their midst.
It was after supper. Thereupon these fire fire-circles ascended higher in the sky towards the south.”
“Fishes and winged animals or bird fell from the sky. A marvel never before known since the foundation of this land! And Pharaoh caused incense to be brought to make peace on Earth… And what happened was ordered by the Pharaoh to be written in the annals of the House of Life… so that it be remembered forever.”
Was this the initial arrival of the orange orbs to earth? Perhaps they were extraterrestrial visitors looking for a new home. In the 3,500 years since their arrival they have not seemed to have caused any problems with earth. Are they a race of beings looking to peacefully co-exist with earthlings? Are they machines? Are they living biological entities?
And what of their affinity for water? It has long been speculated that they have underwater bases near Myrtle Beach and Lake Erie. Why? Since WWII they have been spotted worldwide from the Pacific to the Atlantic to the Arctic to the Tasmanian Sea!!! Is there something about water that soothes them or helps cool their engines or in some way provides sustenance for them?
Take the unusual sighting of lights below the ocean surface from this past summer. A congregation of orange orbs under the surface in the Pacific perhaps?
From the Daily Mail of August 26, 2014:
A pilot and his co-pilot have spotted a mysterious orange and red glow over the Pacific Ocean.
The strange lights were spotted south of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka during the flight of a Boeing 747-8 from Hong Kong to Anchorage, Alaska.
And while no explanation has yet been given, it’s thought that they may have originated from the explosion of a huge volcano under the surface of the ocean.
Dutch pilot JPC van Heijst explained… how, five hours into the ten-hour flight, they spotted an intense flash of light like a lightning bolt, directed vertically up in the distance. This was then followed by a deep red and orange glow 20 minutes later. And the experience left van Heijst somewhat perturbed, owing to the lack of an explanation for what happened.
Together with his co-pilot van Heijst says they felt ‘everything but comfortable’, while no other aircraft were nearby to confirm the sighting.
‘We reported our observations to Air Traffic Control and an investigation into what happened in this remote region of the ocean is now started,’ he added.
While we are far from solving the Orange Orb enigma we now, at least, have questions we can ask. Are they extraterrestrial? Are they friendly? Are they time machines or inter-dimensional transportation machines? Are they secret government black operations projects like anti-gravity propulsion systems? Are they machines at all or are they alive? We don’t know… YET!
So what exactly is an Orange Orb? The short answer is that no one knows. But we are sure learning a lot about them!