The Cape Fear Orbs

Chris Bledsoe says that after one evening on the Cape Fear River his Crohn's disease, eighteen years old by then, was cured. The evening began about six o'clock on 8 January 2007 in the river bottoms near Fayetteville, where the contractor was fishing with workmates and his teenage son. He walked off alone. Two glowing red-orange orbs, forty feet across by one account, hung low over the treeline. A third came down towards him and he lost about four hours. In the tellings the archive holds his son was held motionless by small beings with glowing red eyes, and the group watched lights descend before an egg-shaped craft blocked the road and then passed silently overhead. One telling has Bledsoe meet a small glowing being and a seven-foot blue one back at home. Years later, partly under hypnosis, he recalled a radiant angelic woman.

What is on the record

Three tellings on three channels give five claimant entries, though not five separate people. Two of the entries are groups of workmates. The others are Bledsoe, a companion called Gene and the son. The published record has Bledsoe, three adult fishing companions known by first name and the son, who was seventeen and is not named here. The tellings vary on details such as the size of the orbs and how long the son was held.

The outside record is solid for a case of this kind. Bledsoe filed a report with MUFON in 2007 and gave an interview soon after. Local press covered him and he told the story at length in his 2023 book UFO of God. His companions are said to corroborate the lights. Researchers linked to the AAWSAP and AATIP programmes later studied him, as did Garry Nolan of Stanford. No explanation for the 2007 event has been accepted. Sceptics have put later sightings around Bledsoe down to flares, lanterns and planets, but those readings are not aimed at the river night itself.

Why it sits where it does

Several people were at the river that night, which is what earns the case L3. All of them reach us through tellings centred on Bledsoe. The cure is his own account and no medical record is in the file. What came down over the Cape Fear River is not resolved here.