Manteno, Mokena sightings highlight local UFO reports on UFO Awareness Day

Today is UFO Awareness Day.  

It was first celebrated back in 2001, the day is used to encourage governments to declassify their knowledge of sightings throughout history, dating back to the Roswell reports of 1947.

Locally each year, we have several of our sightings. So far this year, residents in Illinois have filed hundreds of sightings, including several in our area according to the National UFO Reporting Center. Some of the most interesting locally are listed below.

While some can be explained away by Elon Musk’s Starlink network, others leave more of a mystery to even those with aviation experience.

• February 13th – LAGRANGE, IL – “I was looking for the moon I saw the moon but to my right, I saw this object with pulsing lights but wasn’t moving. Then I turned my head to look at the ambulance going by. I looked up again it moved to it’s right about 1/2 mile it just sat there for at least 35 to 40 minutes.”
• February 27th – COUNTRY CLUB HILLS, IL – “My mother was driving from west to east on Central Avenue toward Cicero Avenue. It was Thursday, February 27, 2020, between 4 pm and 4:30 pm. After several grey and snowy days, this day was bright, blue, and sunny. S he looked up and saw what she said was a bright, shiny, metallic vehicle that was in the shape of a clamshell but without the clamshell ridges. There was no noise. There were no vapor trails. She was in disbelief and is a skeptic by nature. She did not know how high up it was but said that if she used her finger and thumb, it was 3 inches across from her point of view. All she wants to know is if anyone else saw it. Thank you.”
• March 14th – HOMER GLEN, IL – “Black object very high above Homer Glen, IL, balloon-shaped very high and slow-moving. Black object very high in the sky. Looked like it was a balloon or possibly 2 balloons. Looked very similar to a giant plastic bag flying ar wind speed. Flying higher than jets usually fly in this area. My friend first noticed it, then he pointed it out to me. We watched it for about 20 minutes then I had to leave.”
• March 23rd – BEECHER, IL – “I witnessed a group of objects moving Southeast on the same flight path, perfectly spaced and moving at the same speed. They looked like stars or satellites. I counted approximately 16 before I watched the last one disappear from the horizon.”
• April 17th – MANTENO, IL – “Last night around 9:15 my wife and I were sitting in our backyard when my wife thought she saw a shooting star, I turned to look but what we saw was not a shooting star. There were three aircraft flying extremely fast going north without any lights and they made no sound. They flew in a tight formation and then went East and were quickly out of sight because of no lights. They weren’t very high up, maybe 15,000 feet. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
• May 15th – MOKENA, IL – “My husband and I walked out of our home and began walking together eastward towards our neighbor’s home. We approached their house and went around back to their deck. As we stood on their deck talking, we were facing their home (south). Approximately 10 minutes after our arrival, we saw this extremely bright, pulsating object appear over their roofline moving west to east/northeast at a somewhat steady pace from what we could tell. It was about the size of a golf ball held at arm’s length. When my husband first set eyes on it, he saw it as a spinning sphere-shaped object. When I looked at it initially, it was an odd shape – like a rectangle with a circle at one end. It was not a Chinese lantern, satellite, or anything else familiar to us. It was difficult to tell how far away or above us it was. As we faced south, it appeared to the southwest at a 40-degree angle from us. We did not see any lights on it that would indicate it was an aircraft (red, green, or strobe lights), and it was silent. It was sphere-shaped, bright white with other purple-blue flashes of color, and appeared to be pulsing and spinning. It was difficult to focus on! your eyes to see any distinguishing features. Our friend tried opening a Stargazer app on her phone to see if it showed as a satellite, and had trouble getting her phone to cooperate. While that was going on, which was maybe 3-5 seconds, I looked back towards the sphere/light and noticed the object changed altitude somehow when it was about 90-degrees in front of us. It was now about the size of a dime held at arm’s length and about to pass behind a tree in the next neighbor’s yard. My husband had been trying to video the object when it was closer but the camera app crashed and he had to reopen the app and try again. He jumped up onto the deck bench to have a higher perspective and was able to begin the video recording after it passed behind the tree. The object was now to our left (southeast) at a 20-degree angle from us and at a much higher altitude. The sighting lasted a total of about a minute before it disappeared to the east-northeast at an 80 to 90-degree angle from our position. After zooming in on his video later, and watching it frame by frame, it was morphing between shapes and colors mentioned above. He took screenshots from the zoomed-in video and took a screen recording of the original video zoomed-in on his iPhone. My husband is an engineer, has an FAA Airframe & Powerplant license, and is an amateur drone pilot. I work in accounting and was once a private pilot.”
• May 22nd – OTTAWA, IL – “Took three pics all within 15-20 seconds of each other. I was not taking a pic of the object and only notice it when reviewing the pic. Ottawa Illinois. Corner of W McKinley and Dairy Ln looking west. Friday, May 22 2020 at about 0910.”
• June 1st – MORRIS, IL – “I saw a strange, large ball of light outside my window. I was sitting on my couch and I looked right out the window and saw this very very bright beaming light in the sky and it was just glowing bright and then it started to fade, all in the same spot. And then the glowing bright light turned into red, green, and orange/yellow blinking lights and the craft moved toward Chicago. I would have thought it was just a plane if I had not seen it glowing like it was before. Took pictures of cloud formations. Did not see any objects in pictures until I stopped the vehicle about 30 seconds after taking pictures. The first picture shows what I believe to be a bird. The second and third pictures show something else. The object just looked like a white spot. Didn’t seem to be a cloud. When zoomed though…… it sure the heck looks like the navy tic-tac to me. The first pic was taken through the windshield. 2nd and 3rd taken with no obstructions.”

Seen something unknown to report?  

You can submit your own here.