1997-01-13 - Lombard, IL - Fireball

While my friend and I were out sledding by my house we saw a comet-like object and eventually nine other similar objects appeared.

First off I was 9 years old and my neighbor was 10. We went to this path by our house. It had a slope on it and it was a nice spot for kids to go sledding. My neighbor and I were doing just that when all of a sudden I look up and see what I thought was a comet. I said to my friend, "Hey look! Check out that comet!" We both look at it for a few seconds. Then he notices another similar "comet" to the north of the one I saw. My first reaction was, "Maybe this is a meteor shower," but I soon realised if this was a meteor shower why weren't the meteors visually moving. I looked back at the UFO I spotted and saw that it had moved further up (it was on an angle like this \ from our viewpoint) and the tail had grown. Then one of us saw a third UFO in the distance which was about 1/2 inch long at arm's length ( the first was about 1 1/2 inch and the second 1 inch ) I can't recall exactly what happened because we were both so excited, but #2 had grown and moved, too. Eventually the third one moved and a fourth appeared. Let me remind you that I didn't see any of these moving, growing, or appearing. This kept on happening, one would move and grow while another would appear. After about a half an hour there were nine UFOs and by this time #1 had grown to about 4 or 5 inches and had moved so it almost vertical ( they were moving in a circular pattern with one appearing when it was horizontal and increasing in angle from there ) as the others had grown proportionatly. By this time we were both freaked out. So we ran the half block home thinking aliens were going to abduct us knowing only what the media had told us about UFOs and aliens. After that I became very interested in the UFO phnomenon and read countless books on the subject. My neighbor however, I think has pretty much brushed it off as somthing explainable, but I checked and there was no comet or meteor shower that night.