WITNESS CAPTURED A PHOTO OF A STRANGE OBJECT OVER ILLINOIS
7-4-11 BELLEVILLE ILLINOIS
I was on the on the phone parking the car when all of the sudden directly in front of me, traveling horizontally from South to North along the treeline, I saw a bright orange ball about the size of a tangerine held at arms length. My first thought was, “oh look at the gorgeous firework”. Then I realized that it was moving far to slow and steady to be a firework and way to level to be a Chinese lantern. I exited the vehicle quickly realizing that this was not something I had seen before, and was both alarmed an in awe. I am surrounded by farmland and it’s a clear night on the Fourth of July….I am used to seeing all kinds of stuff this time of year…but this was different. This could only be described as nothing other than a bright orange fireball. It made NO noise whatsoever. I hung up the phone and quickly tried to take a picture with my camera phone. But try as I might the photos weren’t clear at all, and I was now running to keep up with it as it continued along the horizon gradually getting only slightly smaller. I then proceeded to try and get a video of the object from my phone…however the camera only saw black sky on the viewfinder. Now I was confused, alarmed and increasingly agitated . In the video all that can be heard are crickets and me saying “what is that?! and why is not visible on the camera? ” (That’s right I am the stereotypical guy that could not get video of the blasted thing in a day when EVERYONE has a camera on them. I won’t waste your time by posting the video its 20 seconds of me yelling at myself ) I put the camera away as I came up on the end of the dead end street I live on and met the edge of a large farmers field. It was at this point that the object had slightly curved ahead of me, and was now directly due north. It was then without warning or sound that it moved straight up in the sky at a high rate of speed until within milli-seconds it went from the size of now a ping pong ball held at arms length, to a the size of a large star, only to shrink to match the size of any other star within the night sky. It dissipated into the sky like a star just fading out.
I kept repeating to my self now, “no one will believe me, I couldn’t get it on film… I maybe have on VERY blurry picture of it. I cant tell anyone… who will believe me??