© Oisin Lavelle/Screen CaptureThe mystery object filmed above Christchurch.
That was the reaction of Oisin Lavelle as he spent two hours watching a mysterious, brightly coloured sphere moving in the sky south-west of Christchurch on Monday night.
Lavelle took footage of the object before it moved away at high speed. On Tuesday night it reappeared and he drove nearer for a better look, and saw three such objects. He said he found the whole experience haunting and would like to know what he saw.
"I'm quite an open-minded person, but I'm not a UFO buff or a conspiracy theorist or anything.
"I couldn't come up with a logical explanation for it. My gut feeling is, this was not some sort of technology we have on earth," he said.
Lavelle, the managing director of a building firm, was letting out his dog Rollo when he first saw the bright lights in the night sky from the deck of his lower Cashmere home. It was just after 10.30pm on Monday.
"I grabbed my camera and tried to get the thing steady and in focus. I just didn't know what to think, it was just so peculiar," he said.
"I just kept watching and filming because I wanted to see what it would do".
Lavelle described the object as a brightly lit perfect sphere. The lights kept changing through a wide range of colours at first, but the colour spectrum narrowed.
Comment: The author seemed to be having something of a prophetic moment. In the fifteen years that have passed since this article was written, the number of fireballs and meteorites has continuously increased at an exponential rate. It's only a matter of time before one does a serious amount of damage that can't be covered up or explained away.
We wait and watch.