2002-10-20 - Manassas, VA - Oval

Silent oval/circular/disc semi-transpernt hovering object.

On the day of Sunday, October 20th, 2002, @ 5:31pm EDT in Manassas, VA, (about 35 miles WSW of Washington, DC), when I saw what appeared to be a balloon in the eastern sky heading over the trees to the SW. My 22 month old son can be heard in the background. I used my Sony 360X to record this 30 second clip. I also had the film stopped (later) at .07 second intervals and will send some of those still shots.

One of the interesting things about the timing of the event is that it was during time the snipers were running around the greater DC area, shooting people at random, including a shooting in Manassas, only a few days earlier. Also, this was on the heels of the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon so for two autumns in a row people were on edge and were hunkering down. Hardly anyone was out and about and I was flabbergasted as to why someone would throw a birthday party (where I thought the "balloon" was coming from) knowing that they (the snipers) were targeting children as well. After forgetting about this for nearly a decade, I dug out my HI-8 take from this time frame and decided to take a second look.

I looked back and the weather for that day and temperatures were in the 60s with a light wind and it didn’t look like any atmospheric phenomena or temperature inversions were in the area. It was completely silent and I lost it behind the trees. If you slow the film down, it looks like a football inside a gyroscope trying to right itself for a possible take off. To me, it looked/acted like a plasma. If you see some of the files in succession, the leaves on the trees are effected as if there were some kind of ionizing radiation or magnetic field was being given off.

As I mentioned in a previous report, I worked on NASA contracts and possess a BA in Physics with a Graduate Certificate in Space Operation. I currently teach Physics in another state (my family and I were living in Virginia at the time).