What the fuck was that? I certainly don't know. It was the single most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
At 1:35am EST on Tuesday, July 30, 2002, my friends and I were hanging out in one friend's backyard in Fairfield, OH. We were sitting on his patio, talking about philosophy, religion and Vampire: The Masquerade, when there was suddenly a brilliant blue light that appeared over the house. The source of the light was moving West to East, as we could tell by the way the house's shadow moved. I leapt up first, immediately thinking of the bright blue ball of light (http://devtoolkit.wtop.com/news/newsdetail.cfm?newsID=584517) seen over Maryland that I had read about a day or two previously. I stared in disbelief upward, but could only catch a fading blue trail, stretching across a small portion of the sky.
I don't know what it was, but it was terrifying. It was, I thought, far too bright to be a meteorite. Ball lightning, I had read, usually has an accompanying smell. It was definitely not a conventional aircraft.
All of my friends saw the same thing. All of us are clueless, but agree that it was the weirdest thing any of us has ever seen.
Something similar was reported by many people in Maryland, and I've heard that someone in California saw it the same day. I saw it today. Can this really be discounted as nothing?
If anyone has any ideas, please tell me.
Update: On August 1, the Cincinnati Enquirer published a small article. They don't know what it was either, but they suspect a meteor.