It was a late summer night in South Hadley, Massachusetts, around 10 PM when an extraordinary sight unfolded right above our neighborhood. My parents had stepped out to take the trash to the dumpster, a walk that usually took about ten minutes. But when they returned nearly two hours later, something about their demeanor was off—distant, even trance-like.
Minutes later, my mother burst into the room where my sisters and I were playing video games with urgent news: a glowing red sphere was hovering silently outside, and neighbors had gathered in the parking lot to witness it. We rushed out to find a small, brilliant red orb, no larger than a nail head, suspended around 80 degrees in the sky. It held perfectly still for over ten minutes, emanating a warm, unblinking glow.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the sphere shot away toward the southwest, leaving behind a trail of red light before vanishing into the night. What struck me most was my parents’ initial reluctance to tell us—they simply forgot despite the unusualness of their experience. When I probed, my mom revealed they had lost nearly two hours with no memory of what transpired during that time. My father had first spotted the object hovering just behind the treetops near our apartment complex, about the size of a quarter at that point.
Later that night, looking out the window, I saw what appeared to be a huge meteorite streaking across the sky near the direction where the sphere had disappeared. It burned bright white with a trailing streak, and a large chunk broke off before it vanished behind the treeline somewhere between Springfield and Northampton.
The experience left a haunting mystery hanging in the air: a glowing sphere, lost time, and a celestial fireball blazing a fiery trail—enigmatic events etched into the night sky of South Hadley. Such encounters invite us to question the ordinary and listen closely to the whispers of the unknown.