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Weird UFO caught on video over Virginia Beach Town Center

A YouTuber leaving her job at the Town Center of Virginia Beach spotted a weird object fluttering around the top of the nearby Westin Hotel building. The object sat motionless at times, and occasionally sped off and came back. The witness was left wondering what the heck she had seen. Luckily, she caught it on video.

Picture of the Virginia Beach Town Center at night. The Westin Hotel building can been seen in the center. It is the largest building in Virginia. (Credit: UniqueHomes.com)

Picture of the Virginia Beach Town Center at night. The Westin Hotel building can been seen in the center. It is the largest building in Virginia. (Credit: UniqueHomes.com)

I was tipped off to this video (seen above) by John Greenewald, who posted it on his website TheBlackVault.com. He felt the video was “kind of interesting,” and I agree. It immediately reminded me of a similar video that witnesses had given me a few years back of a strange object flying around the New York-New York Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas strip.

The Virginia Beach video was posted on April 18, 2015 by YouTuber Mandy AMF. The sighting allegedly took place on the same day.

In the video, an object can be seen hovering over the Westin’s large, brightly lit, pyramid roof and spire. At first it doesn’t look too abnormal, but then the object begins to maneuver in strange ways. It zooms off and comes back a couple of times before zooming off one last time at the end of the video. The video last about 3 and a half minutes.

Map showing the location of Virginia Beach. (Credit: Google Maps)

Map showing the location of Virginia Beach. (Credit: Google Maps)

In the description, Mandy AMF says she spotted the object at about 12 am. In the comments, she says she works at the Town Center and spotted it when she was leaving work.

People have left comments suggesting that the UFO might be a bird, a drone, or a hoax.

As for the latter, Mandy AMF says, ” Wow! Lol, definetly [sic] not a hoax.”

” I was not alone while I was filming this, and I have heard from people online who saw it, too [sic],” she adds.

Map of the Town Center of Virginia Beach. (Credit: Google Maps)

Map of the Town Center of Virginia Beach. (Credit: Google Maps)

There are none of the tell-tale signs that this video is a hoax. The YouTube account has been active since August, 2011, and other videos on the account appear to be typical family videos. Well, the humor displayed by the kids in the video may be above typical, actually.

The video, to me, does not appear to be CGI either. So, at least I am convinced it is not a hoax.

What the UFO may actually be is another question. The object does not appear to be self-luminescent. It looks like the object is reflecting the bright lights of the pyramid at the top of the building. Often birds are attracted to these lights. However, this object hovers for a long time before zooming off and coming back. It seems like behavior that would be abnormal for a bird.

Still, one YouTuber commented, ” Looks like a bird probably a falcon [sic], the bright light from the top of the building is reflecting off the bird. If you look close you can make out the wings flapping.”

I cannot make out any flapping. Perhaps you can, if so, let us know below.

Close-up of the strange object caught on video over the Westin Virginia Beach Town Center. (Credit: YouTube/Mandy AMF)

Close-up of the strange object caught on video over the Westin Virginia Beach Town Center. (Credit: YouTube/Mandy AMF)

If this is not a bird, it is possible that it is a drone. However, if it is, it does not appear to have lights on it. When it leaves the lights of the building, it cannot be seen.  Without lights it would be hard to track a drone, especially one flying so high.

According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the building is 508 feet tall, and is the tallest building in Virginia. This is not an impossible height for a drone, but still, very high, especially without lights.

One YouTuber put a link to Aerial Virginia in her comment, apparently suggesting that the object could be one of their drones. When visiting the Aerial Virginia website, it appears they do fly drones around to capture dramatic video of the area, including the Town Center area. Could it be one of their drones?

I have sent them an email, but as of the writing of this story, I have not received a reply. I will let you know if I do.

What struck me about the video is how similar it is to a video I was given many years ago of a UFO over the Las Vegas strip near the New York-New York Hotel and Casino. I have posted it on YouTube and you can see it below.

This video was captured in 2008, I could not remember the exact date, and I lost contact with the witnesses. A couple and one of their relatives talked to me about the sighting after I had given a lecture. They said they had seen a UFO on a recent trip to Las Vegas, and they gave me a copy of the video they captured to examine, and allowed me to post it.

In 2008, Chinese Lanterns were not as common, and neither were drones. Like the Virginia video, the object seems to randomly meander and make sudden quick movements.

It has been suggested that the UFO in Las Vegas is actually a bag floating around in the wind. That could be possible of this Virginia video as well, however, in both videos, the object seems to hover for quite a long time. Also, in both videos, the movement seems to be deliberate.

Either way, I think they are both interesting videos. Let us know what you think they might be below.

About Alejandro Rojas

Alejandro Rojas is a radio host for Open Minds Radio, editor and contributing writer for Open Minds magazine as well as OpenMinds.tv. For several years Alejandro was the official spokesperson for the Mutual UFO Network as the Director of Public Education. As a UFO/Paranormal researcher and journalist, Alejandro has spent many hours in the field investigating phenomena up close and personal. Alejandro has been interviewed by media organizations around the world, including the largest cable and network news agencies with several appearances on Coast to Coast AM.

19 comments

  1. its not a bird. Birds don’t hover and then take off and move as fast as this object did without a straight dive and even at a straight dive not even a falcon could move that fast laterally. Drone is possible but as you pointed out the lights on the drone would be constant. Also, there is no way a bird can reflect light that bright to be seen that bright at that height, not possible. Looks like a UFO to me.

  2. I have a video of something I captured a couple years ago. It was taken from my cell and is kind of grainy, but you can obviously see the red to orange lights I saw. Where and how can I post this video? The video is better watched full screen and preferably with a big monitor…

  3. Ok…this was not a bird and it’s not a drone…UFO…quite possible…top secret military (most likely Navy) surveillance apparatus…quite possibly too. The reason I suggest both of the latter, is because here in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area, is THE SINGLE LARGEST naval base on the entire east coast. San Diego has the west coast covered. Anyway, with it being the largest Naval installation around, and knowing how the military is notorious for conducting “top secret” surveillance and monitoring, one may entertain the notion that the military is conducting “exercises” in the area. After all, not all military exercises are carried out on a mock battlefield or over the open ocean. We all know the military has had a primary role in the examination of UFO and extraterrestrial reported “sightings”, and what better place to examine some of these occurences than here in Virginia Beach. This area has long been a place renowned to be a center for intense and very enhanced “spirituality”, as exhibited by psychic Edgar Casey who lived here in Virginia Beach and gave psychic and spiritual readings some years ago. My premise is then, if Edgar Casey, who is well known and respected CHOSE this area as his “home base” because of its “spiritual energy” and even predicted that what is now the Town Center area where this “object” was recorded in the video, would wind up being the heart and center of Virginia Beach due to the intense spiritual energy in the area. Now, if there is this spirituality in this region, could this “energy” be the reason that apparent and supposed UFOs frequent the area? This is NOT the first UFO sighting, nor will it be the last. I, personally have witnessed a UFO sighting in 1977 here in Virginia Beach. I was 19 years old and was driving with friends in an area in Virginia Beach known as Knott’s Island. It was about 10pm on an early spring evening, and as we were driving, there were 5 “lights” identical to the one seen in the above video that seemed to hover in a “V” formation just off the coast in an area known as Back Bay where the Princess Anne Wildlife Management Area (essentially an island used as a wildlife refuge). I as well as 2 others saw the same thing. It hovered for a few minutes seemingly relatively close to the surface (around 500-700ft), it seemed to “follow” us for a few minutes, change position as if to turn around and face in the opposite direction and then it seemed to “dip” what would be one of the “wing” areas, move closer to the surface of the water and then it moved straight up vertically until the five lights that made up the shape were very much smaller to the naked eye. At that point, they darted directly north and out of sight. It was eerie and a bit un-nerving, especially back then, we didn’t know as much as we do now in regard to UFOs. In any case, directly north of the site where I witnessed my UFO encounter, is a Naval military air base, known as Oceana Naval Air Station. Could it have been surveillance planes/drones from there both in what I witnessed as well as what the young lady with the video witnessed? Possibly…Again, a UFO? Why not? After all, with the amount of “top secret” military maneuvers that take place in the area, who is to say that there IS NOT some sort of contact being made with UFOs? Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, extraterrestrials might be interested in seeing how we live and what we do? Kind of like a living museum of sorts! And what better place to make “contact” than in a place where other “flying objects (our Navy jets and other planes)” would be housed. After all, its sort of like kindred spirits. So, why would it not be a possibility that A UFO was sighted over the Virginia Beach Town Center? Oh, you say you don’t BELIEVE in UFOs? Why not? There seems to be more evidence that there ARE UFOs out there than evidence proving there is not. Just think “Roswell”.

  4. Mackenzie Brunson

    I lived in Columbus Station Apartments for 5 years. My husband has 2 videos just like this. One night we got a closer look at it. It’s a bird for sure. It’s lit only on the bottom from the light at the Westin. There’s bound to be lots of bugs attracted to the lights and there’s lots of wind that high up to enable it to float like that.

  5. Mackenzie Brunson

    This is the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpOh2ekpuU

    This is the second video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07NKo50uwE4

    My husband couldn’t figure it out either. To be fair, it looks like a UFO, not a bird. But, it’s a bird. lol

  6. Mackenzie Brunson

    For the record Columbus Station Apartments is almost exactly where this girl filmed her video. It’s in Virginia Beach, VA. There are lots of red tailed hawks that fly around the area during the day. The local newspaper did an article about them a few years ago. We’ve had a lot of windy days in Virginia Beach for the past couple of weeks. Here is a video of red tailed hawks hovering on a windy day in Boston. They stay almost completely stationary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VPVZMSEvwU

  7. I have seen this in Chesapeake with no lights around.

  8. It is a bird. I see this event just about every night from my apartment patio and can clearly see the wings flapping. When i first saw it i thought “if someone shot a video of this it would look like a ufo video” and I was right..

  9. weather balloon? at least, that’s what the official cover up story will read. Do “they” even use weather balloons still?

  10. This IS either a bird or a drone, look at the video around 1:27 1:30. The OBJECT goes in front of the pole, birds do float like that for a while if they don’t care to go anywhere especially if they’re attracted to the light like they say. If this was a drone not all drones lights appear at over 500 feet. They’re small so you may not see them and they could blend in with the dark because they’re not always bright lights. I’ve seen green lights on drones that aren’t very bright. So this is NOT a UFP people. Too much wrong for it to be a UFO

  11. People live in the Virginia Beach tower. It’s very likely that someone is flying a kite for the rooftop.

  12. I live in town center. It is defently much higher than 500ft, I’d say closer to 1000 and it may look like it is hovering by the top of the building but it’s actually much further past the building. I see it several times a week out in the evenings. A few years back I worked on the navy base in norfolk and reported a UFO to the FAA. It looked like the one in this video but was much closer and could see a light with a color coming from it. It would hover about 500-800 ft right over the peirs. I worked in the control tower as an AC so I knew that it wasn’t an aircraft, and if it was some type of mission from the base we would have know about it.(huge safety issue since we do have aircraft that fly where it was hovering) The only thing I can think of is maybe Langley was doing something and didn’t communicate. I was never contacted after I reported it and it would still fly out there.

  13. Paula, what on Earth (figuratively and literally) makes you think a higher intelligent life form would be interested in us? Do you go out to anthills and stare in awe? You probably did when you were younger, but that shit got old fast. Same thing here. The higher intelligent beings in our parts of the universe surely know about us already, they simply don’t give a shit, no more than I do about the two anthills in my front yard right now. If they are visiting us, they are simply the younger, immature ones; definitely the wrong ones to be negotiating matters of existence with. To an ant, a little kid is a god, but we know better than to trust a 5 year old with the universe. If our governments are in contact with aliens and trying to keep it under wraps, I surely hope they’re formidable enough to come to this realization.

  14. Steven M Gawlas

    I was outside with my friend and saw this same event. I watched it for over twenty minutes. It was self illuminated as at one point it zipped across the sky to where I had to turn almost 180 degrees to keep track of it. The only way I could see it was the fact that it was putting out light that would dim at points. It hovered in the air and then zipped right back to the Westin in a split second. I’ve never seen anything that can fly that fast and bank the way it did.

  15. I also witnessed these objects in the sky while watching the meteor shower tonight from NJ. THESE OBJECTS WERE UNEXPLAINABLE. the way they moved, hovered, and disappeared than reappeared is something unexplainable.

  16. In November 2011 I saw a very similar UFO in the exact same spot. I was with my cousin at the apartments right across independence Blvd. We watched it do very similar things as this video. It kept blinking on and off and finally in turned off and then came back on but this time it was three lights in a triangle shape. It then shot off toward the ocean front. We watched this thing for probably 3 to 5 minutes and I was shaking by the end of it. I had never seen anything like it before or since.

  17. I keep looking for something like this where I live in VB and can never find it. This one I stumbled upon by accident. I feel sorry for you doubters out there. Denying and sticking your head in the sand and hope it goes by. These people ridicule believers because they are afraid and don’t know what it is. Nor do they do there homework about the subject. The Navy recently admitted that UFO’s are real and they have devised new protical on reportage. I have many of my own experiences here myself and it is a mixed bag of different types of spaceships and the paranormal. Most of my sightings were at sundown or earlier. My camera caught a “flap” for more than a week almost exactly in this area in 2017. One of them revealed an orb just outside of one of the widows in the town Center Tower. My latest picture occurred at night – a saucer between the moon and my camera. These things just happen and I was lucky that I was in the right place at the right time. I am in the process of writing a book of my experiences heavy with pics. Please look for it.

  18. It looks like a drone reflecting off of the lights on the tower.
    Plus when it moved in a half circular motion which looked familiar
    to me.

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