A huge, jellyfish-shaped object was captured on camera hovering in the direction of a US military installation in Alaska before disappearing just minutes later.
Sara Jane Osborn told Our News Outlet that she had been photographing a rainbow in Anchorage when a dark shape appeared above the distant tree line near what she believed was Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER.
The Alaska base is home to F-22 Raptor fighter jets and plays a role in air defense, surveillance and military airlift operations.
The sighting took place on June 15 at approximately 10:13 p.m., although Osborn said the sky was still bright at the time.
She said the object seemed to feature several dangling extensions that moved separately as it hovered and shifted from side to side. Osborn estimated that it remained visible for roughly three minutes before disappearing as suddenly as it had arrived.
‘It disappeared almost as quickly as it came,’ Osborn said.
The couple was also struck by how large the object appeared. An aircraft they noticed during the same outing looked remarkably small in comparison.
Afterward, Osborn said, they searched for a kite, its operator or any other straightforward explanation for the unusual sight.
She said that ‘only God and the government’ might know what they had seen, describing an unsettling encounter that left her and her husband, Pete, searching for answers.
A huge, jellyfish-shaped object was filmed hovering toward a US military base in Alaska before vanishing minutes later
The couple had traveled to Anchorage on business from the Valley, where they now live after spending several years in the city.
While driving along Sixth Avenue, Osborn became absorbed by the rainbow and began photographing it through the open car window.
Pete pulled into an empty downtown parking lot so she could take pictures without traffic, cars or signals obstructing the view.
That was when she noticed something she first assumed was an insect.
‘I was annoyed, because I was like, is that a mosquito?’ she recalled. But after looking beyond her phone, Osborn realized the dark shape was large enough to warrant a closer look.
She asked Pete if he could see it, took several still photographs and then started filming.
Osborn said she captured more than a short video because she had been photographing the rainbow repeatedly. ‘But I have multiple stills of pictures taken within milliseconds of each other,’ she said.
Although the object was visible in a series of rapid-fire images, its motion was what concerned her most.
The object appeared to have hanging extensions that moved independently as it hovered and rotated from side to side
The unidentified object was seen near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska
Osborn said its ‘black and silver’ coloring looked nothing like the ‘bright colors’ of the kites she had seen in Anchorage parks.
She also noted that the trees were moving in the breeze, but insisted the wind was not strong enough to account for the object’s behavior. ‘It was very clearly not a kite in its movements,’ she said.
In her view, the object did not move like a kite, whose tail would normally trail in the same direction as the wind.
The short duration of the sighting raised another question. If it had been a kite, they wondered why it would have been flown for only a few minutes.
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‘Because if there was a kite there, why would you only fly it for, like, three minutes?’ Osborn asked.
She also questioned whether the nearby park was large enough to launch or control something of that apparent size. ‘It’s a very small park. You can’t operate a large kite from that park,’ she said.
Having lived in Anchorage for years, Osborn said she was familiar with the colorful kites commonly flown in the city’s parks. To her, this object looked entirely different.
‘You know, you’re kind of looking for some, some logical explanation of what it was,’ she said.
The couple headed toward a nearby park, hoping to find someone putting away a kite or discover another clue that could account for what they had witnessed.
‘And there was nobody taking down a kite,’ Osborn said. ‘People would have been there. The kite would have been there.’
They kept looking and drove toward Arctic Valley, where the wooded terrain could be viewed from a different angle.
‘And we looked everywhere. We looked for, like, 30 minutes,’ she said.
By that point, the object was no longer visible.
Its apparent location only deepened the mystery. The couple believed it had been positioned above forested land connected with JBER. ‘But it’s just forest over there,’ Osborn said.
Sara Jane Osborn said she was photographing a rainbow in Anchorage when a dark shape appeared above the distant trees
The object’s apparent size surprised the couple, especially when a nearby aircraft (right) looked tiny beside it
Pete estimated that the object may have been within roughly three miles of them, although that distance was never confirmed.
They also remembered seeing an aircraft near the mountains that looked far smaller, reinforcing their impression that the unidentified object was unusually large.
Still, without reliable distances for either object, their apparent sizes cannot establish how large they actually were.
The object’s perceived location also does not prove any connection to the military. A kite, drone or another conventional airborne object has not been excluded, and the account offers no evidence that it was extraterrestrial.
Osborn acknowledged that a more ordinary explanation remained possible.
‘You know, maybe it’s a drone-type thing,’ she said.
Even so, she remained troubled by the object’s apparent scale and unusual movements.
The fact that no other witnesses came forward was another part of the experience she found difficult to understand.
‘We weren’t able to find anyone else who saw it when we did either,’ she said.
Osborn said having Pete with her made the sighting feel more credible. Without him there, she suggested, she might have questioned whether she had seen it correctly.
What started as a quiet effort to photograph a rainbow ended with both of them facing an object they could not identify.
‘Because it was there, and then it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t deny that it happened.’
