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The sky above Ashtabula County is often filled with lake-effect snow squalls, but lately there's something else blowing through the night sky that is raising eyebrows.
NewsChannel5's Paul Kiska reports that one woman says that she has proof that we may not be alone in the universe. On a moonlit summer night in July, Mary Stanby decided to record the dramatic sky through an open bedroom window. Suddenly, she said, something went streaking across the moon and the sky.
Stanby kept the video to herself for more than three months, because she believed that people would say that she was just seeing things. Then the Star Beacon ran an article about other UFO sightings in Ohio, and Stanby decided to share her story and her videotape, even though she knew that there would be doubters.
So was the image that Stanby saw really a UFO?
Joseph Derocher, a Cleveland astronomer, said that he doesn't believe so. Derocher said that the image is probably some type of object that flutters through the sky, such as an insect.
Stanby still believes that what she sees on the videotape is a UFO.
Standy has about 15 minutes of tape shot with her family's camcorder to prove what she saw late on July 17.
Standy was recording the full moon at about 11:30 p.m.
"I was going to use the pictures to make a poster for my daughter's room," Standy said.
What she saw as she aimed the camcorder at the night sky from her bedroom window turned out to be far more than just a scenic view of the moon and picturesque wispy clouds, however.
As Standy videotaped from the east side of her Lincoln Drive home, suddenly she noticed tiny, round white lights streaking from left to right above, below and around the moon. "They weren't planes and they weren't shooting stars," Standy said, beginning to shake with the memory of her experience.
One of the lights drifted to the right of the moon, disappeared behind a large cloud, then seconds later zipped to the left and was gone from sight.
During about 10 minutes of recording, more than a half-dozen such "lights" alternately appeared and disappeared around the edges of the moon, Standy said.
Standy said she was forced to brace her arms on the window's edge to steady them as she began to react to the incident.
Her dog, a cocker spaniel, hopped onto the nearby bed and began to growl. Standy also recalled that the fur on the dog's head stood on end as it reacted to whatever was traveling the sky.
An hour later, Standy's nerves suffered a further shock when she went to her front yard and recorded an even more spectacular sight.
Carefully focusing the camera into the cloudless sky, Standy's daughter captured another five minutes of a rapidly darting light, which alternately changed shape from round to elliptical to tubular.
The object appeared white as it darted around the sky, but when caught on freeze-frame, it turned green, red and purple.
Even though it was a warm July night, Standy felt chilled to the bone, she said.
The incident in July is not the first, nor was it the last such experience for Standy.
"I've been seeing objects in the sky since about the age of 9," she said.
On Oct. 21, Standy once again caught something unexplained on film. This time it was a large, white ball of light. At first she thought it was the moon. However, the orb was not in the right position in the sky at the time she was recording . . . about 2 a.m., Standy said.
Standy said she is frightened, not only about what the objects might be, but of the consequences of her coming forward.
Friends and family, as well as strangers, have ridiculed her in the past. Standy was prompted to come forward after reading an article on other UFO sightings in the Ashtabula area which ran in Monday's Star Beacon, she said.
Standy and her family have had difficulty sleeping since the July sighting.
"I didn't sleep for 53 hours after it happened," Standy said.
To this day she is haunted by bizarre dreams in which UFOs enter her home.
Standy has contacted representatives of "Real TV" and other media agencies.
"I don't care what anyone says. I know what I saw. I believe they were spaceships," Standy said, adding there are many questions to which she would like the answers.
