A YouTube video shows a mysterious fireball in the night sky above Kansas City before it splits into multiple objects that descend slowly to Earth.
"Aliens," a background voice says on the video, which appears to have been shot from miles away.
Great viewing. So is another YouTube video, taken from the plane carrying the Army Golden Knights precision parachuting team making a night jump. Flames shoot from pyrotechnic packs on their ankles.
Sheer luck those army guys didn't get tangled with the aliens, because they were both in pretty much the same Kansas City airspace that Friday night.
Oh … right.
Which conclusion one reaches sort of depends on vantage point, huh?
Take the Waldo deck where a group of neighbors were enjoying a summer cookout that evening. A 15-year-old boy, a visitor from Ireland, said: "Look, something's on fire!"
In the northern night sky, there's a bright orange fireball, moving slowly about 30 degrees above the horizon.
The object begins a descent, then splits into three or four smaller lights that glide to Earth.
Too slow for a meteor, someone says. No avionics lights, says another.
"This looks like the start of a very well done sci-fi movie," a man says.
Somewhere else in the metroplex, a camera points at the spectacle. The same puzzlement. That's the "aliens" film that made YouTube.
Great mystery, if not for the other video showing the Golden Knights, who were in town for last weekend's big air show at the Downtown Airport.
Right before bailing into the night sky at 12,500 feet, a Knight remarked how their stunt probably would again bring out the UFO calls.
Seems that Golden Knight hit the spot.
