All Reported UFO Sightings in Charlestown, Indiana

Full Report Text:

Bright object was seen arriving and silently hovering over neighbor's home before moving behind our house and lighting up a window. On the morning of Thursday, Dec 1, 2022 at 6:18AM EST (taken from door camera) my wife, son (16), and daughter (12) went outside to wait for the school bus. My kids are picked up across the street from our home, and my wife was keeping watch over the kids until the bus arrives.

I was indoors and still in bed, but awake. I heard them walk out and close the door and our Arlo camera recorded the time as 6:17 when my daughter first walked out, 6:18 when my wife accompanied my son out the door. The bus arrived at 6:21 and my wife reentered the house at that point.

It was dark outside. The sun rises at 7:41AM on Dec 1st. While my wife was outside, the window to my bedroom lit up very brightly, as if it was daylight outside.

The whole room lit up despite the shades and curtain being closed. I was lying just 3 or 4 feet from the window and sat up in bed and took notice. This window faces directly West from a walk-out basement.

The street and our front door face East. The closest house to the west is roughly 427 feet away. I thought perhaps a transformer had caught fire or that some kind of space debris was burning up during reentry and lit up the outside, however I do not recall the second window in the room lighting up.

It has a thicker curtain though and doesn't get as bright during the day. I sat up confused for a few seconds, listening for any kind of noise and debating whether to get up and look outside to identify the source of light. Within about 10 to 15 seconds and before I decided what to do, the light dimmed.

I then shrugged it off as unusual since that had never happened before. The window is far enough from other houses and any streets that car headlights do not shine on it, and this was much brighter than car headlights- unless maybe the car was parked right outside the window. Later in the day, I spoke to my wife and without telling her about the odd light coming through the window, I simply asked her if she noticed anything unusual outside that morning while waiting on the bus.

To my astonishment, she said yes and began to describe an object hovering over our neighbor's house to the South of ours. Their house is roughly 45 feet from ours. She described seeing a dimly lit object moving quickly approach from the S-SE at a low altitude and said she thought it to be a plane at first, but then took notice when it stopped over the neighbor's house and began to glow brightly.

She said she stepped off the porch in the front of our house and was looking towards our neighbor's house and back in the South-Southwest direction. She said the object hovered over their house for maybe 20 seconds and then moved towards the rear of our house. She said it was silent, and that she couldn't make out the shape because it was glowing too brightly.

She said she wasn't wearing her glasses and so even if she could see beyond the light she may not have been able to make out the shape in the dark. I asked her if she saw any blinking or colored lights and she said no. She said the light was so bright that had there been blinking lights, they might have been washed out in the glare.

She said her initial reaction was that it must be some kind of police drone. She described the light as white and she said the object looked to her like a glowing orb. She recalls thinking that whatever it is must see her because the light was so bright.

I asked her if she recalls the roof of the neighbors house lighting up or anything else reflecting the light and she said she did not recall that detail. Without disclosing these details, I asked my daughter and son separately, who were across the street slightly to the North-East from our house and our neighbor's house, if they had noticed anything odd. My son indicated he had not noticed anything odd.

However, my daughter said she noticed a large object in the sky in the direction of our neighbor's house. I asked her to draw the object, and she drew it on a napkin. She said it looked futuristic like a spaceship from star trek.

She perceived it to be as large as a commercial airline and thought it was in the sky some distance behind and beyond the neighbor's house. I asked her about any sound and she said she heard no jet noise and no drone noises. I took her to the bus stop location and asked her to point where she saw it.

She pointed to the same location that my wife had from our front side walk. When asked, my daughter indicated that she did not notice any blinking lights and she did not see it glowing brightly. She said she witnessed her mother step off the porch and look at something.

I asked her if she saw any bright light over the house or any sort of spotlight shining back at her mother, and she said no. She insisted that she wasn't paying attention and had only glanced in that direction for a few seconds. I asked her a few times if she saw any means of propulsion like jet engines or propellers and she indicated she did not.

I asked how she was able to see the object if she noticed no lights at all and she couldn't answer. There are street lamps near the bus stop and they may have provided some ambient illumination. She said that she thought it was a very strange looking jet that had 2 sets of wings that were the same width.

She said one set was at what she believed was the rear of the object and the other set were closer to the front. She said they were not like the rear control surfaces on a jet because both sets of wings were the same size. I own a DJI Mavic 2 platinum drone which was touted as an improved version with quieter motors and quieter propellers.

My kids and wife are familiar with how it sounds and looks when it is operating. It is not silent at the altitudes they were suggesting this object hovered. They described the object in question as having no sound and both said they thought it was larger than a drone.

Given that she was describing the object's appearance differently than my wife and because she said she thought it to be further in the distance, I used the FlightRadar24 website to go back to 11:16UTC and look for local air traffic from then until 11:21UTC when the bus arrived and my wife entered the house. At 11:16UTC (6:16AM EST) a Helicopter from Indiana University Health was traveling from the north-west to the south-east roughly 1.5 miles from us and was out of the area by 11:18 UTC.

A UPS jet was on flightradar at 11:21:43 UTC heading from the Southeast towards the Northwest, roughly along the same coridoor as the Helicopter, but in the opposite direction. It stayed to the South of our location and turned clockwise back to the south, likely on approach to the SDF airport. The Arlo camera video confirms this timing.

My wife can be seen entering our house at 11:21 UTC and afterwards you can hear the jet in the audio before the camera stops recording its 15 second clip. So it is my understanding this jet passed by AFTER the object was sighted hovering and moving behind our house. There was no other nearby air traffic on flightradar during the 11:16UTC to 11:21UTC window.

I did a video screen capture of FlightRadar to save the data since it is no longer available on flightradar with a free account after 7 days. Given that the object was witnessed moving by 2 people, I disregarded any notion that it was a planet, star, or meteorite and as described by my wife and my experience with the bedroom window, it was too bright to be a satellite. I have made no conclusions as to what the object was, except that it was unusual and likely not an aircraft with a transponder.

From rough triangulation of my daughter's vantage point with my wife's vantage point, I have concluded that it was almost certainly not in the distance as my daughter described. My wife's view would have been obscured had it been further away. I believe it was as my wife stated, hovering above the roof of our neighbors house.

She indicated it was perhaps 10 to 20 feet above their house. I did not report the object to the local police because my wife did not want the attention and I didn't personally witness it. She preferred to have privacy.

I urged her to reconsider because if this was a drone, it was a highly unusual configuration and it was sighted around a bus stop at a strange time. I am concerned about anyone surveiling my children at this time of the morning in the dark. If we ever see the object again, I intend to report it to local authorities.

I chose to report this sighting here because of the following attributes: - Seemingly silent operation at low altitude - Intelligently controlled - Intense blindingly bright white light seen (not typical equipment for consumer drones) described as "glowing orb" - No traditional blinking lights as required by the FAA were detected - If a drone, operation was at dark and out of line of sight, which violate FAA rules (without an exception being issued for nighttime operation) - I experienced its light separately from their encounter outside, and It seemed as though it knew I was inside and intentionally lit up the window - My daughter and wife seemed to experience it differently and my daughter noticed no spotlight shining at my wife or any intense glowing that my wife saw - perhaps due to their different vantage points or something on the roof blocking my daughter's view. So in conclusion, if it was a consumer drone, it was a very unusual custom configuration that makes no sound and is equipped with an illegal light. I also don't rule out the possibility of some type of police drone or military drone.

Attached photo description: The attached drawing was made by my daughter to describe the shape see recalled. I added the propellers and dots on the wing-tips in an attempt to ask her if she noticed propulsion or lights, and she said no. So those parts of the drawing were not part of the original drawing.

They were added by me after the fact. She indicated the wings in front/back were the same size and and then added that the rear wings might have been slightly larger than the front wings. She did not witness the object banking and could not describe if it moved sideways.

Full Report Text:

Middle of summer standing on my deck hearing low flying helicopters comming fast toward me, looked up toward sound and saw this ufo. The craft was almost invisible, but I could make out its shape and all 4 helicopters total black and no lights flying with or chasing it. Days later got up my nerve to talk about this with my neighbor, and he told me he had seen the same thing and was afraid to tell anyone.

Almost 2 yeas later here I am telling the story. ((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD)) ((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the event is approximate.

PD)).

Full Report Text:

3 lights in a triangular shape glidding thru the sky We were sitting around the campfire stargazing when we saw 3 bright but small lights in a triangular formation traveling at a pretty good speed thru the sky. There was no sound. The lights did change direction a little but stayed in the same formation.

((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD)).

Full Report Text:

Large brilliant light from craft over Charlestown, IN. On the aforementioned date and time I took my dog outside (Nabb, IN) and started my car to let it warm up when I noticed what I thought was a Commercial Airplane with its landing lights on over Charlestown, IN. I could not make out the shape of the craft but noticed it had no blinking lights or the usual red/green lights just a brilliant white light.

Around 30 mins later I went out after the dog so I could leave for drill and the Naval Reserve Station in Louisville as I had ((deleted)) duty as a ((deleted)) and notice the light still there and knew it wasn't a conventional aircraft and thought to myself with some doubt that maybe it was Venus or some type of star. For the next 10 mins I drove out of view of the craft until reaching Market St. in Charlestown.

Once I passed the hospital I saw that the high school football field on my left about three blocks up was totally lit up and the craft was gone which was very odd at that time of year and 0345 am I pondered what in the world could be going on there. About 1 min later and much closer to the field, I suddenly saw, I will do my best to describe it: all the light in the stadium started dimming like it was being sucked in by a vacuum, until it all went into a white brilliant ball of light in the center of the field, and then shot upwards with great speed. The ball looked almost exactly like the craft over The Temple Mount and i was flabbergasted and proclaimed all ritey then! I saw no vehicles on the streets at all but surely someone especially the police had to see the massive light over the stadium.

I mean the odds would be impossible. Someone me that you seriously saw this stuff, Please!.

Full Report Text:

Seemed to be a sattelite but for 3-5 seconds it brightened to near the brightness of Jupiter. I have been watching the skies for meteors many clear nights this summer. I have observed many high flying jets traveling to Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis and who knows where else.

I have also seen, at numerous times what appear to be satellites moving in the sky from south to north and southwest to northeast. I use a good pair of binoculars and have seen no running lights or heard any muffled roars when these satellites pass over. Last night I saw a movement near or just slightly northeast of straight up.

In the first 2-3 seconds of viewing, I thought I was looking at another satellite. Then about 3 seconds into view the object brightened almost instantly to the apparent brightness of Jupiter and it was seen as about the same size of Jupiter. Approximately 3 seconds after it brightened, it started dimming again.

The objest was traveling from the northeast to the south. The half moon was behind some trees to my south as I was laying. There was a row of trees blocking the moon.

By the time I found the object in my binoculars ( maybe 5 more seconds ) it had dimmed and then it looked exactly like a dim satellite in motion and brightness. It disappeared from view behind the row of trees in the vicinity of the moon. There was no trail visible and the object never veered from its course.

( If I had to guess what I saw I would say I saw a satellite with the ability to instantly turn on a light source; other than that it looked like the pinpoint of light you see from passing satellites. I live @ 20 miles north northeast of Louisville International airport and am used to seeing various running lights on all types of planes. This was not an aircraft, unless, of course, it was one trying to look like a satellite.

I am a 52 year old retired male who has spent most of my life looking at the sky occasionally. This is the first time I have ever reported anything like this to any organization.