A mysterious black ring appeared in the blue sky over Virginia this week, hovering for about 10 minutes before disappearing.
Williamsburg residents flooded the news station around 11 a.m. ET Tuesday when they saw the ominous circle over a major highway.
Ron Stepp said he was working near Eastern State Hospital when a huge ring of smoke appeared in the sky.
Others reported the sighting from nearby neighborhoods, suggesting it was visible from miles away.
Similar black rings have been seen elsewhere, with fires and explosions being the likely cause. However, no fire was reported by authorities at the time of the sighting.
Renee Fisher took this photograph of the mysterious black ring in a neighborhood in the Waller Mill area of Williamsburg.
Joshua Bean spotted the ring floating above a highway in Williamsburg.
Peggy Olszyk captured the black ring as it hung over the treetops, while Renee Fisher snapped a pair of photos from outside a neighborhood.
Two other viewers sent the station photographs taken on westbound Interstate 64 in the area of the Fort Eustis exit and in the area of Old Moretown Road.
This is not the first time that an object like this has been seen floating in the sky.
In June, a similar ring-shaped cloud was spotted over Venezuela and captured on video that has now gone viral.
“A flying saucer,” one of the young men shouts as they drive down a highway on a sunny afternoon.
And in July, another floating black ring was photographed drifting in an orange and pink sunset over Pearland, Texas.
There have also been numerous other sightings around the world – it seems these mysterious objects can appear virtually anywhere.
So far, no one has officially confirmed what these objects are or where they come from. However, there are some theories about them.
Experts point to fire or some kind of explosion as what likely created the rings, such as fireworks.
WAVY reached out to the James City County Fire Department to ask if there had been any reports of the incident in Williamsburg. The fire chief had not heard of any.
The black ring disappeared within about 10 minutes, one onlooker said.
No one has officially confirmed what caused the ring to appear, but experts say it was most likely some kind of fire or explosion.
The news station also reached out to Dominion Energy, an American energy company based in Richmond, Virginia, to see if there was a blown transformer that could have caused the ringing.
Dominion spokesman Tim Eberly told WAVY there were no incidents this week involving equipment that could have caused a black smoke ring.
But the news station’s in-house meteorologist, Ricky Mathews, said he had seen these rings of fireworks before, which were basically a concentrated fire rising up.
He also theorized that it could be a special effect used for a movie.