Oregon Man Encounters Bright Red Fireball In Front Yard
 
From Peter Davenport
Director - National UFO Reporting Center
director@ufocenter.com
11-14-1
 
BEGIN COPIED REPORT FROM NUFORC WEBSITE--06SE01
 
Bright red fire ball in front yard

While taking photos in my yard a bright red burning ball of fire appeared in my camera lens. I lowered the camera and no more than 10 feet from me was a ball approximately two feet in diameter; with an outer glow that extended it to about 3 feet. The shape was almost a perfect circle. I did not feel any heat irradiating from the ball, yet it was burning bright red and emitting heat waves. It remained about 20 seconds, then started to rise vertically, very slowly to about 60 feet, where it remained motionless for a short period. It then made a 90 degree turn and then accelerated out of site. I have a color photo of this event. I called the police to report it and they had another report of a fireball a block away.  
 
Follow-Up Investigation Report
 
By Eric Byler
Review@home.com
Oregon UFO Review
 
Hi Peter,
 
I just got back from an investigation at the coast where I got the picture you see here along with the negatives. I am still working on the report and have to make one more follow up call with him to clarify something, but the long and short of it is that the photographer is a ((deleted)) year old man of (partial) American Indian heritage by the name of ((deleted)). He lives alone with a rather large ((dog)) in a very nice home on the coast of Oregon in a small town named Florence.
 
((He)) spends a lot of time on his yard as it looks quite good. On the day of the picture, he was out with his camera...a ((high quality SLR camera))mm 1:3.5 - 4.5...using 35mm 400 film... a very nice camera that he chooses to keep on automatic for the simplicity of pointing and shooting. He had already made a number of pictures when he approached the plants you see in this picture.
 
According to his testimony, as he was looking through the view finder and was about to shoot, this image appeared in his view finder. He quickly hit the shutter button and dropped the camera to see what this was. He estimated the object as being a couple feet wide and glowing like fire with an outer lighter glow that emanated like a heat wave. He pointed out however that as close as he was, only a few feet away, he could feel no heat. He thought this as odd.
 
After a few seconds, the object began to slowly rise until it reached tree level which is quite high as you can see in the picture, the whole time just watching in awe thinking, "'what in the hell is this?" Then he realized, hey, take another picture. He brought the camera up to began lining it up with the object when it did a 90 degree turn and shot away from the house traveling west towards the ocean. He immediately took the film down to have them developed to see if he indeed had got the object on film. I have checked out the negatives and the package with the number of pictures that were developed and is does appear that he stopped taking pictures in his yard by the time he got to the picture in question. My thought is if this were just a reflection of some sort on the lens then it probably would have only shown up when the pictures were developed and he would have continued taking pictures. The fact that he did indeed stop taking pictures at number ten (the roll goes backward from 24 to 1) and then developed the pictures tell me that he may have indeed seen something of a nature that points away from simple lens reflection and does add up with his story.
 
I spent some time in the house with ((witness)) and I found him very easy to talk with. ((Witness) is a big man but soft spoken. His house is very nice with lots of reference to his heritage seen in the art work on his walls. He has three ((medals)) permanently displayed on a side table as he was in WW2. A wall in another room had a number of framed certificates of achievements and education showing his many accomplishments over the years.
 
In his main den where we talked there was a large volume of books on shelves. I saw no books pertaining to UFO material as many were related to American Indian heritage
 
((Witness)) does not have a computer for internet access but does have basic television.
 
He has no idea what he saw. He did contact the police who came over and took a report. The following day he says he talked to the assistant fire chief while in town and he (the chief) mentioned hearing of a similar report on his scanner that day but remembers it as being on 24th street, rather than 23rd where ((witness)) lives. I am following up on this. I did contact the state police who reports that they have had similar reports like this over the past few months in other parts of the coast but did not elaborate. This is being followed up on as well.
 
 
Sincerely,
Eric Byler
Oregon UFO Research
 
 
NUFORC Note: Our gratitude to Eric Byler, Oregon UFO Review, for the excellent investigation and follow-up review. - PD