Published: 1:55 PM 7/24/2009

Redding, California - 07-23-09

I had a UFO sighting last night. My family was gathered at my sister's for dinner, and we were all sitting under the stars, enjoying the cool night air after a scorcher of a day.

Suddenly someone said, "That's weird... what IS that?" I looked to the section of sky, and there it was... a big, round, glowing ball of golden light, no more than 200 feet high, moving silently and at a steady, but not exceptionally fast rate of speed across the sky.

Its direction was from southwest to northeast, and it proceeded on with a pause or two until it suddenly began getting smaller and fading in brightness, and then it was just gone... POOF!

There was no cloud cover, and my sister's place is on acreage in the country, so there's very little light from homes or businesses, and no street lights to interfere. The sky is very dark there, and you can see the Milky Way clearly.

The air was still, with no discernable breeze, and there was ordinary air traffic as you would expect to see... all of them less than a fourth the size of this thing we were looking at, and all with the typical strobing lights you expect to see on conventional aircraft and the presence of engine sound.

The object had none of those attributes. No one had a camera close at hand, and by the time my sister went in the house and upstairs to get her's and came back out withit, the object had disappeared.

My eleven year old niece said to me, "I'm not sure what that was, but I know what it WASN'T! It wasn't a satellite..." (she was right... way too love in the sky!)... "and it wasn't an airplane" (also accurate... it had none of the requisite attributes).

She then continued with "Birds aren't that big, or lit up like that" (!), finishing with "... I guess I just saw my first UFO." And indeed she had.