Photos & Videos Emerge: Mass Sighting of Bizarre Lights in Houston Thunder storm

• When: August 11th, 2014
• Where: Houston (particularly in the Northwest/Katy area)
• What: Mass sighting of several lights, at times appearing as a craft and at other times separate lights, hovering in a thunderstorm

October 24th, 2014 Update: Mass sightings all over Texas & worldwide, too. Read the latest..

With a promised show from the Perseid meteor shower and a spectacular thunderstorm coloring the night of August 11th in Houston, it's no surprise folks had their cell phones and cameras pointed up at the sky.

Doesn't mean the night of August 11th didn't have a few surprises in store. Specifically, an extraterrestrial visitation. Or... street light?

Original Photo of UFO to Hit the Web

Well, at least some think the photograph above - apparently taken by a local DJ Monday night and quickly spread wildfire-style all over Twitter - is really just a reflection of a nearby, similarly shaped street light. MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, says "It’s no more than light trapped in the side window." Still, others speculate it's one of NASA's much-talked-about experimental flying saucers - after all, the Johnson Space Center is located in Houston.

Another popular explanation for the above photo - and the many other videos and photos to have surfaced since - is ball lightning, a new light phenomenon to scientists that is often triggered by thunderstorms. "Hoax," of course, has been tossed around, but considering how many people have reported seeing this event, that is unlikely. Many fake photos and at least one fake video have indeed hit the web, but that tends to happen when a legitimate UFO sighting becomes such an attention grabber that others try to latch on to its popularity by pretending to have hoaxed it.

To make matters ultra confusing, an apparent pal of the original witness tweeted to him "hahah good one @djnayyz that’s actually the reflection of the highway lights on the glass door I can’t believe you fooled the news well they believe what ever  you tell them." I can't find this tweet.

Oddly enough, I also received the photo in question in my own inbox, but there was a different name attached to it - not DJ Nayyz'. They claimed they were harassed on Twitter and told to say the photo was a fake. In fact, the more I investigate, the more apparent "original eyewitnesses" I find.

Why all the confusion... disinfo?

Regardless, Texas UFO Sightings was inundated with dozens of UFO reports - most commonly detailing a circular shaped craft hovering over the Northwest section of Houston. YouTube, Twitter, and other parts of the web, as mentioned, were also abuzz.

Several local news outlets have already picked up on the story, including Click 2 Houston:

Check out two additional photos taken by DJNayyz (or Nathanial Xavier):

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And here are a few new ones that were submitted to Texas UFO Sightings, notice how the objects appear triangular in shape here:

"Didn't even notice until a friend saw my photo and mentioned it to me. I was just watching the lightning storms notice" Submitted Anonymously by a Texas UFO Sightings reader.

Up close

"A took a pic up to the clouds later kinda looked at a bright spot hidden in the clouds" - Submitted anonymously by a Texas UFO Sightings reader.

Could this sighting be related to a similar sighting from Hondo, TX (west of San Antonio) the night before? Check out the photo and witness description submitted to Texas UFO Sightings:

"At 9:43pm, I was outside looking at the super moon when I saw a metallic reflective object in the sky, then a circular object with lights perfectly spaced except for two lights. The bottom part of the object moved from side to side, it seemed. I do not know what it was."

Now, to really make things interesting. We've got video. Sorry, videos.

The first of these videos was reportedly uploaded by a man named Andrew Pena, and it has been re-broadcrast - along with the original Twitter photos - on local news stations and all over YouTube. First, screenshots:

Now, the video:

The second of these videos features a pair of strange lights out of Houston, mingling with the lightning, but this time we don't see any "saucer" shape:

Witness description and video:

"2 unexplained flying objects. One falling with a slight shadow under and above to the left. Then a couple seconds later you see a small flying object then it zooms off."

Is your head hurting yet?

I'll leave you with a smattering of the many reports I received, one even suggesting this UFO to be the lights of a helicopter pad, and another suggesting that there are many false eyewitnesses to this event:

My daughter and I saw the same circular lights in the sky you have in your August 14 photo. Again this was on an overcast cloudy night. We were in downtown Houston at the time of our sighting, on I-45 north. What you are seeing is the Helicopter pad lights on one of the downtown skyscraper rooftops, reflecting off of the bottom of a low hanging, dark, storm cloud. It's not a U.F.O. The lights show up as white lights, don't change color, pulse, or move, if you stand stationary when viewing them. Usually they are only seen during lightning storms, as the dark clouds hang low over the city, and they briefly appear as lightning flashes to the left or right of their reflection on the bottom of a low hanging storm cloud. U.F.O debunked

I was traveling from the west side if town to my home in Deer Park around 9:45-10:00pm. The thunderstorms were primarily on the east side of town moving southerly. The lightning seemed pretty unusual.... very spider-web like. When i approached near Interstate 10 and loop 610 near the Budweiser factory, I saw a bright "ball lightning" object shoot from south to north pretty low on the horizon. It was the same speed that you would expect a shooting star to travel. I thought it was awesome because I had never seen ball lightning before, and associated it as such. The following day, my friend posted a link to the picture, and I friended the original poster, who works at a tattoo shop. They say that they have video of the object too, but are not posting it.

I also saw the cylindrical shaped craft with a ring of lights! I spotted it as I was driving home, it blinked out and appeared in a completely different spot not even a second later. It was then approached at high speeds by another similar craft, the second craft then hovered below the first for about 5 seconds and then sped off. The first continued in the direction it was originally going.

Monday August 11 2014 At 10:31 pm me and my three friends two of the three being my employees went outside to take our usual smoke break..we where anxious to go smoke because it had been raining few minutes prior. ..once being outside after a few minutes of chit-chat I look over to the left and look up to the sky and notice lights..I immediately grabbed my phone out my pocket and proceed to take video..as I took video I also snapped pictures of what appeared to be a ufo. All 4 of us saw this and where kinda in shock not really knowing what we just saw..of course we said to each other "damn we just saw a f****** ufo"...We looked over the video over and and over..by the way the video is 1 min.and 6 seconds long..So what I did right after was I posted it on my Facebook the picture that I thought was best.. ( which is the one Mr.Manny V seems to be taking CREDIT for)..What happened later on that night at my home only me my wife and my two kids know...I Didn't sleep that night..I called 911 and nobody showed up to the house..around 10am Tuesday morning I turned on my cell phone and 5 minutes later it was ringing with no number on the screen..all the screen displayed was incoming call..I also received texts saying no subject with no number listed ..when u open the text it would say unknown address. ..so after all this weird stuff with my phone I logged into Facebook and noticed the picture had gone viral along with like two other pictures that were posted by other people. .the only people who have seen the video are the three people with me that were with me at the tattoo shop and my wife. ..Everyone who knows I was the true publisher of the pictures says that I can get a cash reward but to me no cash is worth my family's safety...What do I do?

Me and my cousin were sitting in my car on a typical night just chatting about life. I look down for a few seconds for some reason, dont remember exactly why. But after a couple seconds i hear my cousin say "Look!" I didnt at first, but he kept saying look look. I finally did, i see these huge lights that look far at distance but not of this world. But as i kept looking i watched the shuttle zoom behind trees like it has a way of feeling watched.. Im so happy there is others in Houston who had this experience

Already this month, Texas UFO Sightings has featured a triangular craft over Laredo and a spooky blue light caught up in a thunderstorm in Houston. It is definitely a very active time for UFOs in Texas right now.

Were you one of the witnesses to this amazing UFO? Help Texas UFO Sightings clear up all the confusion and potential disinformation! Report your sighting.

And, as always, share your ideas about what this could be in the comments or on the Facebook page.