Our next video takes us to Texas
and a strange sighting in the sky that
alarmed a group of friends.
Was it proof of a UFO or just a mystery
the size of the Lone Star State?
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): September 2018.
It's a warm night in Tomball, Texas, just north of Houston.
Nick Daily and a group of his friends
have come home from dinner to their apartment complex,
when they are astounded by mysterious lights in the sky.
WOMAN: Oh, my god.
NICK DAILY: [bleep].
MAN: What the [bleep]?
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): Take a closer look.
Three teardrop-shaped glowing objects
appear to hover in a deliberate coordinated motion.
Nick's friend also begins recording.
One thing is for sure.
Nick has never seen anything like it.
NICK DAILY: They would circle around in formation
and then come back to a triangle formation.
It was incredible.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): But as the crowd stands transfixed
by the mysterious lights, the UFOs suddenly
disappear and then reappear.
NICK DAILY: Look at them. Look at that.
Look at them.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): Nick is convinced
whatever he witnessed, it's not from this world.
I am ex-military.
I was in the United States Air Force.
I've never seen flares act like that.
I've never seen planes like that.
It looks like UFOs to me.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): According
to author and journalist Alexis Brooks,
this is far from the first time mysterious lights have been
spotted in the Lone Star State.
These very strange "UFO-type" lights have
been seen as recently as April of 2022 in a town called Kyle,
Texas.
These lights emanated a sort of orange glow,
and local officials came up with no explanation.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): These eerie shimmering lights are
similar to the ones seen in Tomball, but with one even more
mysterious difference.
ALEXIS BROOKS: In the case of the Tomball UFO sequence,
we have something that has been referred to as phasing,
that some of these craft change their atomic structure
so that they appear to be dematerializing
and rematerializing.
So is Texas rife with UFOs?
One of the first reported UFO incidents in Texas
was on April 17, 1897, when a UFO crashed
on a farm near Aurora, Texas, with claims of an alien pilot
found dead inside.
So have those aliens returned?
Or is there another way to explain
what Nick and his friends saw?
Let's ask the experts.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): First, we
asked video forensic expert Michael
Primeau to examine the footage.
Does what we see appear to be authentic?
We examined the file to determine if there were
any original file signatures.
No known file signatures were identified.
And at this low of spatial resolution,
it's very difficult to make determinations in reference
to CGI.
However, when the videos are placed side by side
and synchronized, whatever occurred
in the sky appears to be consistent across both videos.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): Next, we go to aviation
expert Tim McMillan.
Are we simply looking at conventional aircraft,
like an airplane or helicopter?
We're not seeing movements that are consistent
with fixed-wing aircraft.
What we're looking at here, they're really close.
So they're violating how close you
want to be to another aircraft.
Close proximity, it becomes even more dangerous for a collision.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): McMillan
is also skeptical these could be another common flying machine.
Drone would match up best for what we've seen so far.
But if they're drones, we have to start taking into account
the amount of energy it takes.
And so for these to be bright lights,
they're not going to be able to stay up for very long
because they're just going to drain that battery power.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): We asked astronomer
and video effects editor Marc D'Antonio if the answer
is in front of us all along.
Could they be sky lanterns?
Sky lanterns are possible, but they
don't move the way these did.
Sky lanterns are very subject to the wind.
What they wouldn't do is sort of circle around each other.
And at certain points in the video,
they're leaving like a tail, almost.
That is very telling information.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): In fact,
D'Antonio believes those streaks are
the final piece of the puzzle.
I think that this actually was very
likely skydivers with flares.
TONY HARRIS (VOICEOVER): But if these
are nighttime skydivers, why then would
they be jumping over Tomball, Texas, at night?
D'Antonio points to a similar event in Tomball
five years earlier in 2013, which also featured
slowly drifting lights.
MARC D'ANTONIO: There was a high school game,
and they did, in fact, have skydivers with flares skydive
into the game.
When you actually saw the three in the sky
and they separated from each other, and they actually left
trails behind them.
And that trail could be illuminated smoke
from the flare brightness.
While D'Antonio makes a strong case for parachuters
with flares, our research hasn't been
able to confirm there was a parachute demonstration
that night in Tomball.
And without definitive visual proof,
we think many alternate possibilities
are still on the table.
Our verdict?
For now, we're going to go with unexplained phenomenon.
But if you're in Texas, be sure to keep looking up,
and send us what you see.