UFO believers have been mulling over a cellphone video shot from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Cincinnati recorded Friday evening (Sept. 28), in which a trio of bright lights can be seen blinking in the night sky, moving relative to one another, and slowly descending to the ground.
The so-called Cincinnati UFO case seemed perplexing indeed, but in the days since YouTube user Galuyasdi posted his video, he and fellow YouTubers have worked together to solve the mystery. Instead of alien spacecraft, the UFOs appear to have been skydivers putting on a pyrotechnics show.
Soon after the video went up, several people who also saw the mystery lights posted comments stating their locations at the time of their sightings and the direction in which they saw the lights. Galuyasdi reported in the video's comment thread that he used this crowdsourced information to pinpoint the location of the lights to less than a mile south of the Wal-Mart parking lot. [See video]
Then, a commenter named Geekchiic posted that the lights were a team of professional skydivers working for an organization called Start Skydiving, which puts on pyrotechnics shows throughout the Midwest. "We do demonstration jumps into various locations around the country," Geekchiic wrote. And indeed, Start Skydiving did a pyrotechnics jump Friday night during the halftime show of a football game at La Salle High School, whose stadium is about a mile south of Wal-Mart.
"I am pleased to acknowledge that we were the team that skydived into the La Salle Lancers Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio on the night of September 28th, 2012," John Hart, another member of the skydiving team, commented, adding, "It's not the first time we have been UFOs. :)"
The mystery appears to be solved: The UFOs were skydivers. "This meets all criteria as to place, date and time," Galuyasdi said in a follow-up comment on the video.
Of course, not everyone is convinced: "The official story is that the lights were caused by skydivers, but only a fool would believe that," one commenter wrote last evening. Apparently, the startling coincidence of a skydiving pyrotechnics show happening in exactly the same place, date and time as the landing of an alien spaceship is easier to swallow.
This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
