1988-07-05 - Rome, NY - Sphere

Orange spheres near Rome, NY

7/5/88 - 0:30 AM I was driving in my car back from Sylvan Beach, NY to Rome, NY with 4 friends in the car. As we took the left at the flashing light towards Rome (I apologize about not remembering the route number) I noticed a small orange light high in the sky, I told my friend sitting in the front seat to check out the moon and we both kind of blew it off. As I continued driving the orange ball increased in size and continued to decend to no more than 3 feet above the road surface 300 yards in front of us. The shape of the object was spherical, but there were no defining edges to it. It was brightly illuminated in a deep orange color, the light from the object reflected off of the road as well as the farmhouse it was in front of. The object's diameter was easily 50' as it was larger than the two story farmhouse. At this point we were 300 yards and closing the object rotated 90 degrees on the Z axis and it appeard to be two balls of the same size at that point. This is when the girls in the back seat saw it and started screaming, which caused me to panic. I spun the car around and headed back toward Sylvan Beach as fast as I could go. I attempted to look back and see if it was still there, but my car had louvers on the back window and I could not see the object behind me. My friend in the front seat looked out of his window and said that it was following us. I gunned the car and we parked under a bridge that leads to the park in Sylvan Beach. We looked around and it was gone.

After we calmed down we discussed what we saw. This was not a hallucination, we were not under the influence of alchahol or any drugs. This was a long time ago and I can recall it as if it just happened and I have 4 other witnesses that would testify under oath. I thought that this should somehow be recorded in case anybody else had seen somthing like this that night.

I have lived in the area most of my life and have never seen anything like this. Being that this was close to Rome NY where Griffiss Air Force Base (A SAC base) there must have been some kind of radar signature. In any event, the object was guided as it had a controlled decent, a hover and then following us.