A long time ago (a few weeks anyway) someone had asked for more on the Orange County (CA, USA) "mystery blob" sighting. (Or perhaps it was in alt.forteana) I have located an article from the Orange County Register (2/10/95) that appeared the day after the event. Enjoy one and all!
Oddity: Anaheim residents saw something strange, but no one knows what.
ANAHEIM -- All around a tree-lined neighborhood near West Ball Road and the Santa Ana (I-5) freeway on Thursday morning, adults and children alike were asking one another: "Did you see it?"
Those who said they glimpsed a dark object hovering in the sky between 6 and 7:30 AM -- among them a 13-year-old boy, a 46-year-old chiropractor's aide, a 74-year-old former military pilot and a 53-year-old school attendance clerk--said it was the strangest thing they'd seen in all their years on this planet.
Few wanted to say the initials: UFO. No one from the federal air agencies, nearby military bases, the National Weather service or the Police Department had heard any reports or could explain the sighting.
"We feel strange admitting we saw something so weird in the sky," said Elaine Mazor, attendance clerk at Ball Junior High School, who saw what she described as two dark oblong objects hovering over the school on West Ball Road. "I didn't see any green men or anything."
Descriptions differed. One person said there were two round objects, and three people said they saw a misshapen lump. All agreed it was dark and seemed to hang in the heavens without visible propellers, wings, or a balloon.
"To me it looked like a Model-T that got hit by a freight train," said Chris Christensen, 72, a former World War II pilot who lives on Sonya place, about three-fourths of a mile away from the school. He said he saw the object around 7:30 AM, when he went out to get the morning paper.
Christensen grabbed a pair of binoculars, but he said he still couldn't make it out. "I still don't have the slightest idea what it was." he said. "I was just curious about it. It was like a piece of junk hanging from an invisible balloon."
One mile south of Christensen's home, 13-year-old Joe De Guevara was walking along Aspen Street, on his way to school, when he saw something in the sky at about 6:45 AM. "It was all different shapes: it wasn't just one shape," he said. "It wasn't really round, it wasn't really square. It looked like two people on top of a platform, spinning."
De Guevara said he watched the object the whole way to school. At the school, Mazor and Linda Linder, 44, a campus aide, were standing outside, watching with several other adults and children.
"It was like a cylinder, black, turning and rotating in the sky." said Alexandra Diaz, 14.
Kathy Thompson, 46, said she became alarmed when she heard about a KIKF/ 94.3FM radio broadcast about the object from a friend. Thompson said she awoke at 6:45 AM and saw a small, round, protozoan-like object that grew into a larger, splatter-shaped object hovering beyond her apartment complex on Palm Lane.
"I'm going: 'Oh my God, this is unbelievable. Somebody has just got to know what this is,'" said Thompson, a chiropractor's aide.
Authorities from Disneyland [the theme park is no more than 2 or 3 miles away] to the FAA were stumped by the reports, dismissed by some as an early-morning urban myth.
Anaheim police received no calls about the sightings, Sgt. Tom Mathisen said.
"It wasn't Disneyland," Magic Kingdom spokesman John McClintock said. "I've checked with everyone who might have conceivably had something in the air this morning, and no one did."
The FAA didn't receive any reports either, and controllers at Fullerton Airport, less than five miles north, saw no sign of the objects, officials said.
The National Weather Service regularly releases balloons to test atmospheric conditions, but not in Orange County, said meteorologist Stephen Ahn.
Planes did not fly out of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station until 7AM, and the first helicopters did not leave Tustin Marine Air Corps Station until an hour later, said Cpl. Chris W. Cox, a spokesman for the bases.
Ted Bartimus, spokesman for the 63rd Army Reserve Command, stationed at Los Alamitos, said his units sometimes fly in the area where the sightings occurred, but he doubted anyone would call them UFOs.
A Corona Del Mar UFO investigator said the reports could be anything from a hoax to a bizarre weather formation.
"You don't know, in fact, that it's extraterrestrial," said Melinda Leslie of the Mutual UFO Network.
Back in the West Ball neighborhood, residents don't know what they saw. "I don't think it was a UFO," Christensen said. "What's so strange about it, though, is you don't usually see something that's floating in the sky." .