UFO sighting or just a prank?

No one knows what woman saw flying over city

By Sarah Bultema
The Reporter-Herald

Mary Aldrich still is hoping to find an explanation for the bright red orbs she spotted in the sky Sunday night.

She would love to hear they were a balloon or a flare or even just a prank.

But so far, no one can tell her exactly what the strange lights were.

For Aldrich, they remain unidentified flying objects.

“I would love an explanation,” the 61-year-old said. “But I don’t have any hopes of getting one.”

Aldrich was getting her mail at her south Loveland home about 8:45 Sunday night when she glanced into the night sky and saw something strange: two red lights floating side-by-side.

Bright as halogen lights, the orbs were diamond-shaped, although she couldn’t see any shape beyond the vibrant light.

Watching the objects intently, Aldrich saw the two orbs begin to glide in unison, staying perfectly spaced.

“It looked very foreign to me,” she said.

“There was no sound, no smoke, no trail — there was nothing. They didn’t belong there.”

She grabbed a friend — who wished not to be identified — and they watched as two more orbs joined the group and began gliding in unison.

Another pair followed, making a perfectly spaced cluster of six.

Aldrich had been watching them for about 13 minutes when a single light swept near the group.

The entire cluster quickly moved from the northwest to southeast.

Then they disappeared.

“Right away you think of a government explanation,” Aldrich said.

“But my mouth was dry and my heart was pounding the whole time, because you have this feeling you’re witnessing something that you’ve never seen before.

“Since then, I’ve just been trying to make sense of it.”

Larry Mack, operations manager of the Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport, said he has no idea what the lights might have been.

“I haven’t heard anything from our pilots who fly around,” he said.

Mack did note that there have been a lot of helicopters flying to and from Loveland’s hospitals.

They travel about 500 feet above the ground and use lots of lights at night, he said.

“But what she described,” he added, “I have no idea.”

After witnessing the unexplained spectacle in the sky, Aldrich couldn’t sleep.

Early the next morning she began researching what she’d seen, to try to find some kind of answer.

On a UFO sightings Web site, www.ufoinfo.com, she found a report that seemed eerily similar.

According to the report, an unnamed air traffic controller from Loveland spotted two orbs floating in the night sky last June.

The description almost perfectly matched what Aldrich had seen: lights brighter than stars moving in perfect unison before disappearing into the sky.

The only difference was that those orbs were white, and there were only two.

Loveland residents aren’t the only witnesses to these strange floating lights, said Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center.

In fact, similar sightings have been reported from Arizona to New Jersey. Just last week, Davenport took a report of the same description from a person in California.

However, even with multiple sightings, he has no idea what the lights could be.

“What the objects were we almost certainly will never know,” he said, noting that unless the government or another party comes forward with an explanation, scientists would have to find the source of the light to make any sense of it.

“All we can do is receive the information and ... scratch our heads and wonder what in God’s name is going on.”

Whatever it may be, Davenport thinks Aldrich’s report was the real deal — a rarity when it comes to UFO sightings.

Only about 10 percent of the stories he hears are legitimate, explained Davenport, who has been taking reports for 14 years.

But because of her attention to detail and critical thinking, he said Aldrich’s report was genuine.

“This woman in Loveland had, in my opinion, almost certainly had a very, very interesting sight,” he said.

He recommended that anyone who saw similar objects Sunday night report it to the National UFO Reporting Center’s Web site, www.nuforc.org, or call the hot line at 206-722-3000.

Aldrich, too, would love to hear if anyone else saw what she witnessed.

“When I tell people, I don’t want to have to convince them. I didn’t ask to see this,” she said.

Aldrich never had much of an opinion about UFOs before.

But after this, she said, “You have to believe in it.”

“I like to be comfortable. I want anything like that to be far, far away,” she said.

“Unless someone can give me some kind of explanation, ...” she trailed off. “There was just some feeling about it that I can’t explain.”