Some unusual things were in the sky last night. Friends and I were sitting out on a back porch at about 8 pm and noticed a bunch of orange lights in the sky to the west floating slowly southwest. They appeared from behind some trees then gradually got farther away and faded out. Over maybe 10 minutes we saw about 20, sometimes in groups and sometimes solo. They weren’t going in a straight line, more sort of wiggling their way through the sky. The (blurry) photo above was snapped from the porch and you see 6 or 7 of the lights.
It was hard to tell how far away the lights were or how high they were — some of us thought they were a few blocks away, while others thought they were higher and farther. A few other Columbia Heights folks on Twitter saw them also.
A friend called the city’s call center asking about the lights and was told “Federal authorities are looking for a suspect.” Weird. Maybe the person who answered the phone was confused.
Dave Stroup at DCist and a few others think they were Chinese sky lanterns, but I think they were [REDACTED BY CIA]. Chinese lanterns are possible, but I wonder why? There weren’t any Chinese holidays last night according to a cursory Google search, though a DCist commenter says it might have been the Chinese mid-autumn festival which was the 22nd. Another DCist commenter thinks they were launched from around 14th and Irving.
Anyone else see them? Where were you?
Here are a few artist renderings of the aliens.
