A gigantic UFO silently burned its way across the Sandusky sky Tuesday night.
That's the story from three Camp Street men who happened to look up just as the object tore through the dark yonder at about 10 p.m.
Robert Lowery, a clerk at the 7-11 store on Camp Street, said he was lugging a pile of cardboard boxes to the Dumpster when a bright object in the sky caught his attention.
"It was about the size of a dinner plate," Lowery said. "You could see the heat coming off it."
At the same time, about two blocks down Camp Street, Montee Prieur and Daniel Harpst were shooting the breeze next to the Camp Street Bar.
"I looked up and this huge fireball went right over us," Harpst said. "It was on fire and had a long streaming tail ... I yelled at my buddy Montee who was sitting right next to me, 'Hey man, check that out.'"
Prieur said he looked up in time to see it.
From their vantage point, the great ball of fire raced overhead for brief seconds before dropping out of sight.
"All I can tell you is it was a UFO," Prieur said. "I've only seen one other thing like it, and that was up in Michigan."
It's anyone's guess how many people saw the mysterious object.
Lowery, in fact, wasn't going to tell anyone about it.
"I was just kinda like, 'That was weird,' but I didn't think much about it," Lowery said. "That's one of those things - if there's nobody else around to see it, you don't go around talking about it. People will think you're crazy."
But when Harpst came in the store all worked up about the sighting, he asked Lowery about it.
Both men agreed on this much: The object came from the southwest, headed northeast and disappeared somewhere over the lake.
"It was really moving, whatever it was," Lowery said. "It looked like it went down somewhere around Johnson Island - that would've been the main stage. I wonder if anybody over there saw it."
The whole show lasted about four seconds.
"God, I wish I had a camera," Harpst said.
Elizabeth Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's Great Lakes Region, said radars didn't show anything extraordinary Tuesday night.
"There was no report of anything unusual last night in that area, or any area for that matter," Cory said Wednesday.
But local astronomers weren't surprised at the sighting
Lois Wolf, director of the Sidney Frohman Planetarium in Sandusky, said it was probably a meteor that survived upper-atmospheric friction
"They do go by very fast and would burn white," Wolf said. "It's not uncommon.
Retired planetarium director Dick Speir agreed.
"Some meteors don't burn up in the upper atmosphere, and those that reach the lower levels would produce quite a bit of light," Speir said. "You'd be able to see it for a long ways - there should be other sightings in Erie County at least."
Harpst still isn't convinced of any particular explanation.
"I've seen a lot of strange things in my life, but this was a chart-topper," he said. "And I'll tell you one thing - it wasn't no airplane."
That's the story from three Camp Street men who happened to look up just as the object tore through the dark yonder at about 10 p.m.
Robert Lowery, a clerk at the 7-11 store on Camp Street, said he was lugging a pile of cardboard boxes to the Dumpster when a bright object in the sky caught his attention.
"It was about the size of a dinner plate," Lowery said. "You could see the heat coming off it."
At the same time, about two blocks down Camp Street, Montee Prieur and Daniel Harpst were shooting the breeze next to the Camp Street Bar.
"I looked up and this huge fireball went right over us," Harpst said. "It was on fire and had a long streaming tail ... I yelled at my buddy Montee who was sitting right next to me, 'Hey man, check that out.'"
Prieur said he looked up in time to see it.
From their vantage point, the great ball of fire raced overhead for brief seconds before dropping out of sight.
"All I can tell you is it was a UFO," Prieur said. "I've only seen one other thing like it, and that was up in Michigan."
It's anyone's guess how many people saw the mysterious object.
Lowery, in fact, wasn't going to tell anyone about it.
"I was just kinda like, 'That was weird,' but I didn't think much about it," Lowery said. "That's one of those things - if there's nobody else around to see it, you don't go around talking about it. People will think you're crazy."
But when Harpst came in the store all worked up about the sighting, he asked Lowery about it.
Both men agreed on this much: The object came from the southwest, headed northeast and disappeared somewhere over the lake.
"It was really moving, whatever it was," Lowery said. "It looked like it went down somewhere around Johnson Island - that would've been the main stage. I wonder if anybody over there saw it."
The whole show lasted about four seconds.
"God, I wish I had a camera," Harpst said.
Elizabeth Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's Great Lakes Region, said radars didn't show anything extraordinary Tuesday night.
"There was no report of anything unusual last night in that area, or any area for that matter," Cory said Wednesday.
But local astronomers weren't surprised at the sighting
Lois Wolf, director of the Sidney Frohman Planetarium in Sandusky, said it was probably a meteor that survived upper-atmospheric friction
"They do go by very fast and would burn white," Wolf said. "It's not uncommon.
Retired planetarium director Dick Speir agreed.
"Some meteors don't burn up in the upper atmosphere, and those that reach the lower levels would produce quite a bit of light," Speir said. "You'd be able to see it for a long ways - there should be other sightings in Erie County at least."
Harpst still isn't convinced of any particular explanation.
"I've seen a lot of strange things in my life, but this was a chart-topper," he said. "And I'll tell you one thing - it wasn't no airplane."
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