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  • 2
    Oct
    2012
    10:41pm, EDT

    UFO case solved in Cincinnati

    Lights were sighted in the skies over a Wal-Mart store in the Cincinnati area on Sept. 28.

    Watch on YouTube
    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Follow @b0yle


    For a few days, the strange case of the Cincinnati Lights intrigued UFO fans, but it looks as if the person who took the original video has come up with the likeliest answer: The spooky lights floating through the sky are best explained as skydivers doing a show during a football game at a nearby high school.

    The Sept. 28 light show was certainly reminiscent of more celebrated UFO cases, such as the Phoenix Lights of 1997 — but it was also similar to the El Paso Lights of 2010, which were similarly traced to skydivers using pyrotechnics. This time, it was the video shooter (known on YouTube as Galuyasdi) who figured out that a Start Skydiving team was doing a pyro show for La Salle High School's homecoming game at just about the time that the sighting took place. (La Salle lost to Moeller; sorry about that, Lancers.)

    Even though this case appears to be solved, echoes of the Cincinnati Lights are still reverberating among UFO fans. It's always harder to track down the likely cause of a UFO sighting than to put up a video and just leave it at that. Hats off to the videographer and fellow investigators who solved their own mystery before it became a full-fledged UFO meme.


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    More cases from the UFO files:

    • UFO seen in Middle East, linked to missile test
    • Video from Chilean air base stirs up UFO buzz
    • Book claims Soviets played role in Roswell UFO incident
    • Cosmic Log archive on UFOs

    74 comments

    So the aliens are doing skydiving shows now... pretty smart, they know how to make a buck and have fun too

    Show more
    Explore related topics: space, ohio, video, cincinnati, ufo, featured

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Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Science editor at msnbc.com, author of "The Case for Pluto," winner of the National Academies Communication Award for Cosmic Log in 2008. Alan Boyle covers the physical sciences, anthropology, technological innovation and space science and exploration for msnbc.com. Check out Cosmic Log's archives by following the links below, and see Boyle's full biography at http://bit.ly/boyle-bio

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