UFO SHOW

MANHATTAN BEACH

By Robert Stanley

In the Fall of 1992, while living in Manhattan Beach, I photographed the strange sequence of UFO images above. It was about mid-afternoon and I was in my back yard looking up in the sky to the east. The sun was on the west side of the house and I was standing in the shade. A strong on-shore breeze was blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean.

What ads to the mystery is the fact that I was looking for UFOs that day. It didn't take long before I sighted something... a bright, white balloon. I watched the balloon for a few minutes then suddenly realized it wasn't moving with the wind? In fact, it wasn't moving at all!

I decided to quickly step inside and grab my binoculars. Unfortunately all I could find was a camera with a telephoto lens. I grabbed the camera and dashed back out side.

The balloon was still in the same spot. While sighting the object in my camera I decided to take some pictures of it to compare with "real" UFO pictures. I lowered the camera to wind the film... then looked back up and noticed the balloon was getting closer. It was now moving against the breeze towards me?

I focused and centered my lens on the balloon and snapped a picture. Wind, focus, shoot. Wind, focus, shoot. Wind focus, shoot. That was when the balloon stopped directly over head. I decided to snap a few more shots as it lingered there for at least a minute before moving away - only now it was now going the other direction with the wind! I watched the balloon quickly drift off to the east and wondered how it could have defied the strong ocean breeze?

A few weeks later, I took my film to be developed. When the slides were ready, I picked them up and placed them on a lightbox to examine them. I was expecting to see quite a few images of a rather plain, white balloon in the sky. However, as I scanned through the slides I instead saw the sequence of UFO images below.

Here is the sequence again:

Click here for more images of UFOs and balloon-shaped spheres