Manhattan UFOs explained: party balloons from Westchester

If you had your hopes pinned on getting beamed up away from your tiny, overpriced and bedbug ridden studio in Greenpoint by the cluster of unidentified flying objects spotted over the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

However, the group of shiny objects floating in the sky over the area around 23rd street and 8th avenue has been identified, and it appears that a children’s party at a school in Westchester was responsible for the excitement yesterday afternoon. The principal stepped forward to claim the sighting, saying a bunch of balloons for a teacher’s engagement party came loose and drifted south:

“UFO? They’re crazy – those are our balloons. To me it was the most automatic thing. But it’s all over YouTube,” the New York Daily News quoted Angela Freeman, head of the Milestone School in Mount Vernon, as saying.

A parent was bringing about 40 iridescent pearl balloons to the school for language arts teacher Andrea Craparo when the wind spent a bunch away.

“They looked big and they were all together, so it looked like one UFO,” said fourth-grader Nia Foster, 9.

Witnesses and web adherents who “want to believe” aren’t buying the explanation that a bunch of balloons released into the sky- a fairly commonplace occurrence- managed to grind one of Manhattan’s busiest neighborhoods to a screeching halt for hours:

Witness Pete Bryant, 32, added: ‘I saw five or six lights shining in the sky. There was no way that thing was a balloon.

‘There was something weird about it. Light just doesn’t reflect off balloons like that.’

Coincidentally, retired US Air Force officer Stanley Fulham made a widespread prediction that extraterrestrial beings would make appearances over several major cities on October 13th, the date of the incident in Manhattan.