UFO Scare Over Massachusetts Turns Out To Be Medical Helicopter

A woman relaxing in her garden hot tub in Pembroke, Massachusetts, captured a short video that seemed to show a glowing object falling from the sky. The eight-second clip quickly sparked interest online, with some viewers wondering if the mysterious object could be a UFO or something entering Earth's atmosphere.

The sighting happened just after 9pm on a Wednesday evening. Colleen McCormack said she was looking up at the night sky when she spotted a strange light. "It looked like it was on fire or something and it was just coming down really fast," she explained. Grabbing her phone, she filmed the light descending behind the trees. Colleen said she expected to hear a loud crash, but instead the light disappeared silently from view. "My heart was pounding," she said. "I'm like oh god, what is about to happen right now?"

Colleen didn't hear or see anything after that, and when she contacted the authorities, there were no reports of debris or crashes in the area. Both the local police and fire departments confirmed they'd received no related calls. The FAA - the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees air travel in the US - also said they had no reports of anything unusual in the area and added that they don't comment on videos submitted by third parties.

But the mystery didn't last long. Online, users on Reddit's UFO forum took a closer look at the footage and its location, and one user was able to track down a likely explanation.

The object wasn't falling at all. According to the analysis, it was actually a helicopter travelling away from the camera, creating an optical illusion due to forced perspective - a trick of depth that can make something flying horizontally appear to be dropping vertically. Based on the shape and lighting, the helicopter was identified as a medical evacuation aircraft with the callsign N144NE.

Using freely available flight tracking data from a service called ADS-B Exchange - a public tool that shows real-time aircraft movements - users matched the helicopter's flight path with the time and place the video was filmed. The data confirmed that the medivac helicopter passed directly over the neighbourhood in Pembroke at 9:02pm, flying at an altitude of around 1,650 feet. Locals also noted that this particular aircraft makes regular flights between Boston and Nantucket.

What Colleen had captured on video wasn't a crash or a fireball, but simply the flashing navigation lights of a helicopter heading away from her position, made to look unusual by distance and the camera's focus.

While not an alien encounter, it's a good reminder of how our eyes - and smartphones - can sometimes play tricks on us, especially at night.