'UFO' Recorded over South Carolina on Christmas Eve

A still image from the video posted Debra Thomson to her YouTube channel. (Image credit: Debra Thomson, Kiawah Island Girl / YouTube)

South Carolina resident Debra Thomson posted a video to YouTube on December 24th, 2018 which she said shows a “beautiful red sphere” flying off of Kiawah Island at around 9:33 p.m. that evening.

Thomson shared the following description of events alongside the video:

It was about 9:33pm EST off the coast of Charleston SC. I have an unobstructed view in all directions. Earlier in the evening I put a light up Christmas tree on outside light up. I went outside to unplug it when I noticed this beautiful red sphere in the sky. I knew it was not Venus, it was in the North West Sky. It was moving toward my direction and also seemed intelligently in control. I felt as if it knew I was film [sic] it. It moved around a bit and disappeared into a pin hole, then it reappeared back to its same size in a few minutes. With the naked eye it was much more brilliant to see.

I called the local airport they saw nothing on radar plus in case you think this, No, no weather balloons. Plus it's Christmas Eve. It was dead silent. It disappeared again. As if it shrunk to a pinhole. Then I saw it a bit later into a head wind that was going North west. But it was very far away at this point. I just wanted to know if anyone has had any experiences in the last few days and the following days.

I haven't seen any sign of UFO's [sic] in months out here. It really is quite amazing when you see one that seems to "splat" out of another dimension and then change into a round shape with other spheres and go in formation into a head wind. Or the many other ways I've seen UFO's [sic] and USO's [sic]. This place seems to gravitate a lot toward UFO sightings and inter dimensional sightings that I've experienced. I'm not a nut, I just happen to love the night skies and if you look you will see many beautiful things out there. I could tell you many stories. But it would take way to [sic] long.

“I don’t know, what is this?” Thomson asked in the video.

“I just came outside and it appeared in the sky,” she said. “It’s very bright red…it’s not making a sound…it’s moving at a decent speed, then it sort of stops. It’s moving around a little, like it’s not sure which way it’s going.”

“It’s so weird,” Thomson added. “It just seems like it’s observing…I know it’s not an airplane.”

WCBD News 2, Charleston’s NBC affiliate, began to receive reports of the object—alongside stories of similar objects seen in the past—to their Facebook page after posting a story on Thomson’s experience.

“We saw it too on the 24th at 9:30…in Ladson [South Carolina],” Roberto Rodriguez commented. “We thought it was a UFO too.”

"My husband is a crabber and he and his coworker saw this a few years back in around the same area. It was very early morning hours. He said it was a lot bigger, did the same type of movement and it definitely wasn't a lantern," Casey Nicholes posted. "They both saw it and neither one were on drugs."

But other commenters were skeptical.

“It most likely was a drone,” Peter Bendal Kear remarked. “At first I thought it was one of those luminary things you light a candle then release and they float up until the candle went out, but with it leaving and then coming back it seems more like a drone.”

Thomson was consistent in her response to naysayers.

“It was not a drone, it was not a balloon,” Thomson said. “I called the airport as I was taking a second film of this object and I called a few authorities that they gave me numbers for. They said they had nothing up there flying. It was too high and too big.”

According to an article in The Post and Courier, glowing balls of light are "a phenomenon that turns up in the sky here every so often,” that, so far, has remained unexplained; despite attempts to write it off as Chinese lanterns or terrestrial aircraft.

“I’ve seen some strange things out there,” Thomson said of the area where her sighting took place. “A lot of people around here have. They don’t like to talk about it because you can get a reputation. But I’ve got it on film.”

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.