2018-10-24 - University Place, WA - Sphere

Orange orb flies erratically and flickers over my dog and I in a field.

Preface: I am a former private pilot, so I am very familiar with aircraft, civilian and military.

I was walking my dog through a field next to a local church on Christmas Eve evening while the church was letting out. I estimate the cloud base that evening was approx. 1000-1500ft AGL with scattered clouds.

I saw an object approaching me from the NW (Narrows Bridge area here). Object was spherical in shape and emitted a brilliant, extremely coherent orange glow. I could see no other projections, wings, navigation lights, etc. Being so bright it was hard to estimate its size, but my best guess is between 1-4 meters in diameter. The object made zero noise.

As it approached my direction it just skimmed the bottom of the cloud layers, moving through cloud material and lighting it up with the same orange color it was emitting. It sped up and slowed down erratically and quickly, moving very much as a living creature would as apposed to human aircraft or drone would. There was very little wind that night, so I doubt it was any type of lighter than air object. I estimate it varied in speed from 40-100mph for the entirety of my sighting. It never changed altitude. (~1000-1500ft) As the object got closer it did a gradual turn to the south and moved parallel to my location. It flickered as it moved. When it was moving slower the flicker rate was slower, as it sped up it flickered faster, and at a certain point it flickered so fast as to smooth out and appear as a steady light.

Oddly, my dog actually looked up at it and barked at it. He really never barks or even notices aircraft for that matter. It was quite strange.

I always carry a military grade 1000 lumen flashlight with me when I walk the dog at night, so as it went by I shined my light at its direction at full power, then switched it to strobe mode to see if I could 'get its attention' – it didn't seem to take notice of me or react in any way. It continued south for another 30 seconds then turned to the south-west and faded away in the distance.

I found it somewhat odd no one in the nearby parking lot seemed to notice the object flying over. As far as I could tell no one was looking up at it but me.

I should note, this is the second time in my life I have seen a glowing orange orb type object. The exact same type of object flew right over me in 2012. (I'm 51 years old as of this date)