58°Locals: UFO over Sandusky Tuesday night was 'chart-topper'
Oct 06
2011
A gigantic UFO silently burned its way across the Sandusky sky Tuesday night.
That’s the story from three Camp Street men who happened to look up just as the object tore through the dark yonder at about 10 p.m.
Robert Lowery, a clerk at the 7-11 store on Camp Street, said he was lugging a pile of cardboard boxes to the Dumpster when a bright object in the sky caught his attention.
“It was about the size of a dinner plate,” Lowery said. “You could see the heat coming off it.”
At the same time, about two blocks down Camp Street, Montee Prieur and Daniel Harpst were shooting the breeze next to the Camp Street Bar.
“I looked up and this huge fireball went right over us,” Harpst said. “It was on fire and had a long streaming tail ... I yelled at my buddy Montee who was sitting right next to me, ‘Hey man, check that out.’”
Prieur said he looked up in time to see it.
From their vantage point, the great ball of fire raced overhead for brief seconds before dropping out of sight.
“All I can tell you is it was a UFO,” Prieur said. “I’ve only seen one other thing like it, and that was up in Michigan.”
It’s anyone’s guess how many people saw the mysterious object.
Lowery, in fact, wasn’t going to tell anyone about it.
“I was just kinda like, ‘That was weird,’ but I didn’t think much about it,” Lowery said. “That’s one of those things — if there’s nobody else around to see it, you don’t go around talking about it. People will think you’re crazy.”
But when Harpst came in the store all worked up about the sighting, he asked Lowery about it.
Both men agreed on this much: The object came from the southwest, headed northeast and disappeared somewhere over the lake.
“It was really moving, whatever it was,” Lowery said. “It looked like it went down somewhere around Johnson Island — that would’ve been the main stage. I wonder if anybody over there saw it.”
The whole show lasted about four seconds.
“God, I wish I had a camera,” Harpst said.
Elizabeth Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Great Lakes Region, said radars didn’t show anything extraordinary Tuesday night.
“There was no report of anything unusual last night in that area, or any area for that matter,” Cory said Wednesday.
But local astronomers weren’t surprised at the sighting.
Lois Wolf, director of the Sidney Frohman Planetarium in Sandusky, said it was probably a meteor that survived upper-atmospheric friction.
“They do go by very fast and would burn white,” Wolf said. “It’s not uncommon.”
Retired planetarium director Dick Speir agreed.
“Some meteors don’t burn up in the upper atmosphere, and those that reach the lower levels would produce quite a bit of light,” Speir said. “You’d be able to see it for a long ways — there should be other sightings in Erie County at least.”
Harpst still isn’t convinced of any particular explanation.
“I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my life, but this was a chart-topper,” he said. “And I’ll tell you one thing — it wasn’t no airplane.”
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01:58 AM
WaterStreetCooncat says
(sp) doors
01:57 AM
WaterStreetCooncat says
Other beings are here now but they wouldn't be using such a primitive way of traveling. They use dimension soors & travel by thought. They can also bounce back & forth through time. These ships materialize sometimes, but most are at the bottom of the ocean or in the mountains or in burned out volcanos.
06:02 AM
pntbutterandjelly says
For what it's worth....
Just the other day (and I swear this is real)...I saw a minature UFO hovering around in, of all places................my toilet !!! I KNOW for a fact it was a real...
Unidentified Floating Object!
I hollered for my spouse to come look before they disappeared but she said she had seen them before.
I'll try to post some photos a.s.a.p. here for the publics comments.
for what it's worth and in this case...it ain't worth chit.
(sorry folks)
09:44 AM
Nicole says
its definitly real. my parents took that video while they were camping
02:56 AM
WaterStreetCooncat says
I saw a dark, ruby red light zip by behind the clouds around 1993 just outside Findlay, Oh. The next day it was in USA Today that it was spotted all across the Eastern Coast. One minutenorth of Chicago, 30 seconds later in Ohio, seconds later New York. I never saw a red color that deep. In USA Today someone was quoted as saying "It was probably a meteor"- and someone who saw thye thing replied "meteors don't have windows".
Then there are those mysterious cigar shaped things often spotted.
Fisher's video, unfortunately I think is a hoax. That doesn't even look like sky in the background. It looks like a laser dazer on a dark wall.
11:52 PM
Nicole says
@lightening mcqueen....just click the link...
10:40 PM
Lightening McQueen says
Fisher, how about some info/key words to find your video on youtube?
07:19 PM
Centauri says
@ Fisher Thanks for the reply
There is a lot of information about ball lightning but scientists do not really understand it.
Check out this site on ball lightning. It behaves strangely at times.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060531-ball-lightning.html
He describes seeing a glowing, tennis ball-size formation hovering nearby.
"It drifted along a few feet above the ground," Hubler recalled, "but when it came inside [the pavilion] it dropped down to the ground and skittered along the floor."
"It made lots of gyrations or oscillations and a hissing sound like boiling water. When it went out the other side [of the pavilion], it climbed back up [several feet off the ground]."
12:37 PM
Fisher says
My wife and I were sitting by the campfire when we saw it.I immediately went and got my camera. It traveled pretty damn slow thru the sky.My only regret after watching it is that I zoomed in and out too much. We came home and just showed it to our kids and kind of forgot about it untill we saw the story.I just put it on youtube after we saw it in the paper.
10:58 PM
Centauri says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XKpY8MTyQ8&feature=related
@ Fisher Why no reply?
Perhaps it was ball lightning as shown in the link that I provided
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
04:26 PM
Taxpayer says
Come on! Knowing the merits of your hometown paper, all those photos were STAGED to enhance the story. It is typical of a paper who prints everything from the AP-0bama wire service and NEVER questions the liberal tripe or validity of the story. Just cut, copy and paste and POOF, you receive journalistic awards from the AP-0bama. Ha! Ha! My take on this UFO sighting? It was Rep. Dennis "UFO" Kucinich (D-OH) making an aerial view of his NEW congressional district and all his NEW constituents.
09:03 PM
Centauri says
@ Fisher It appears to me like somebody was shaking the camera and using the telephoto lens for close ups.
Was that your camera and did you see this UFO with your own eyes? Several decades ago, I did see a UFO. I have no explanation for what it could have been. No known aircraft could fly like what I saw in the night sky.
04:47 PM
nosey rosey says
Fisher - that's pretty cool. Did the hair on the back of your neck stand up because that would have given me the heebie-jeebies! We saw something like that one time from our front window. My husband went on the porch to watch but I was too freaked out to venture outside.
12:52 PM
Fisher says
Watch this and tell me what you think .
11:01 AM
GD02 says
For those of you who think the register is the biggest joke on the planet, or think they are not worth the time of day-then STOP reading it. Clearly you have nothing better to do than read something that you think is complete BS. Im not praising SR by any means..but then again i don't go bashing them and then read their articles either...
10:08 AM
JERRY from SANDUSKY says
That my friends is the mother ship from NC bringing in the new city manager if you looked carefully you will see the parachute...............
08:48 AM
Just Thinkin says
Well all I can say is HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
06:44 AM
Woody Hayes says
It was Juliebeth trying to find rocket fuel for the mothership under 2.99 a gallon.
04:46 AM
EJ says
John Dorian, you're allowed to be either ignorant or arrogant, but not both at the same time.
07:48 PM
Garyrc says
It was the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!
07:24 PM
WaterStreetCooncat says
Maybe it was one of the giant triangular military spy drones they sent up on a last trip to burn it up purposely. These mammoth, flat ships are "cloaked", making them invisible, since they are large flat blimps with a giant t.v screen an the bottom & a giant camera on top, recording the sky above & playing it back on the screen below, making them unseen. Radio Announcer Art Bell had one pass by his home when it was still in the High Desert of Nevada. A former 3rd shift co-worker of mine downtown, in the '90's said they saw one cruise by out over the Bay & it looked like a football stadium going by pretty slow.
07:16 PM
JohnDorian12 says
LOL!!! They say that UFOs tend to be seen mostly from people who live in trailer parks...well Daniel Harpst is just that, im guessing his vision was a bit blurred by what ever he was drinking!!! LOL...first this Sandumpsky Register trys to make a "celebrity" out of Frank Erckman, now they are giving merit to what Daniel Harpst is saying....when will it end?? This paper is the BIGGEST joke on the planet....is this REALLY newsworthy?? Funny it was 10pm and NO ONE else saw anything....LOL!!!!
06:18 PM
Train says
Said the Cowardly Lion to the Scarecrow..."I DO believe in ghosts!...I DO believe in ghosts!...I DO, I DO, I DO believe in ghosts!"
05:23 PM
camero says
it was soap poisoning OHHH ralphie
05:18 PM
bergheim says
Very interesting. I would not rule anything out before knowing more details. I was for many years member of an UFO organisation over in Switzerland and one of the persons there, a school principal from Austria, took on one particular night several good night time photos of a UFO doing some kind of atmospheric burn off causing a special lightening effect. This was after the pilot flying the beam ship ( Semjase ) had talked to the contact person in the group (Billy Meier). I have got some phtos on my new website Meiersaken.info
04:35 PM
Cowboy says
The freaks come out at night!
03:58 PM
The New World Czar says
The west side must have had one heck of a bumper crop on mushrooms this year.
01:59 PM
Darwin's choice says
It was the old numbers from the price of gasoline yesterday rocketing back up !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 cents a gallon overnite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Loss leader though............
12:58 PM
OMG.LOL.WT_ says
Both pointers- Lefties.
12:17 PM
althenaruby says
Who knows what they saw. I mean who honestly believes that theres nothing out there?
12:11 PM
cjarvis says
By strictest definition, they did see a UFO and they are really. UFO = an "object" that appears to be "flying" and is "unidentified". So if you do not know what it is and it is flying in the air - you have a UFO.
12:03 PM
6079 Smith W says
Remember history and what happened to the Native Americans not long after Columbus arrived.
If you see a spacecraft land and an extraterrestrial gets out - shoot 'em.
You may be saving Earth.
If the natives would have wiped out Columbus and crew, the next group of explorers woulda thought twice about attempting it again.
11:46 AM
wiredmama222 says
Someone should check with the NASA people and with the many observatories in Ohio that keep track of such things to see if indeed it was a meteriorite, another piece of falling space junk or whatever.
Seems NASA has tons of stuff falling out of orbit that will be coming down on our heads soon and they have lost track of it.
Heaven knows what fell out of orbit this time Just recently they lost some old satellite the size of a BUS and couldn't tell where it fell.
Sounds like the old poem about the arrow doesn't it? I just hope something large doesn't fall on a house and kill someone.
Those things travel for miles when they streak through the sky and God only knows where this piece landed. Somewhere someone got a big shock or Lake Erie did assuming it was going north
11:43 AM
Julie R. says
I have a first cousin (he's retired now) that worked for the FEDS in Washington for over 30 years. He told us once that UFO's are real and he got to see the proof of it --- what the government doesn't want anybody to know. He always was a good kidder so I don't know if he was kidding on that or not.
11:42 AM
juggalo7 says
kids remember, this is why drugs are bad! you see things in the sky and think they are UFO's
11:32 AM
lugnut2511 says
Ive seen it a few yrs ago while out in my yard about 1 am smoking a cigarette, Figured it to be a sort of meteoriod, Its an amazing thing to see thats for sure. Seems like they like falling into lakes for some reason.
11:34 AM
Lloyd Christmas says
Nice RIDICULOUS photo Register! YOU FAIL!
Probably wasnt a UFO. It was probably a shooting star or just people firing up some Crack rocks in Sandusky again.
10:44 AM
Fisher says
I have the same thing thats being described on a video from this past Memorial Day in Maumee Bay.Never seen anything like it.
09:53 AM
Centauri says
Sounds like a meteor fireball to me.
You can post the event in the link below. You can also read all about meteors and meteor showers at this site.
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/public.php?start_date=2011-01-01&end_date=2011-12-31
09:48 AM
Cityslicker says
Next thing they will be saying is what the tornado sounded like as it ripped through the trailer park.
09:45 AM
Woody Hayes says
Juliebeth, are you driving without your headlights on, again?
09:30 AM
wakeup says
wow, $1 coffee refills
09:27 AM
myname says
How was a Register photographer there at this exact moment to take these dudes picture of them seeing the dinner plate object in the sky???
09:31 AM
6079 Smith W says
Professionals tend not to use the term UFO because it implies BEMS (bug-eyed monsters).
The new term is Unidentified Arial Phenomena (UAP).
IMO, a fun one was the one from Apollo 11:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7RUwbqrO08&NR=1
09:02 AM
snatchblock_445 says
its a new Gang moving into Sandusky
08:56 AM
007 says
Looks like they are doing a re make of Saturday Night Fever with their fingers pointing into the air..LOL
08:55 AM
understatement says
I want some of what your smokin man! PLEASE. I believe in UFOs but if it was on fire...maybe some aliens were falling out of it!
08:52 AM
Raoul Duke says
Let's light up the space ship tonight so that everyone on this planet can see it.
08:47 AM
titanfan84 says
I was on monroe st with a bunch of friends at about that time and they thought it was a shooting star.