Green balls of fire

I've always been skeptical of Luis Elizondo's claims about the significance of his role in the Pentagon's seemingly on again/off again interest in UFO's (or now, "UAPs").   Now he's put out a book, with a lot of big, dubious claims, and I get the impression the mainstream media is like me - pretty much ignoring him because it all sounds too much - too "good" to be true. 

But, here's a pretty non-critical article (not exactly a review) of the book at the New York Times.   It notes:

In the book he asserted that a decades-long U.F.O. crash retrieval program has been operating as a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors. Over the years, he wrote, technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin have been retrieved from these crashes.

“Humanity is, in fact, not the only intelligent life in the universe, and not the alpha species,” Elizondo wrote.

More evidence for the big claim, please.

I am interested in this claim, though:

In “Imminent,” Elizondo described his struggle within the program to investigate the phenomena, and his effort, since his resignation in 2017, to push for greater transparency on what is officially known about U.A.P. He also wrote about personal encounters with U.A.P. — green orbs that he said visited his home while he worked for the Department of Defense....

Elizondo also wrote in the memoir of personal encounters with U.A.P., describing green-glowing orbs about the size of a basketball that invaded his home on and off for over seven years. The objects were able to pass through walls, and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, he wrote.

The orbs were also witnessed by his wife, two daughters and their neighbors, he wrote.

As for “our friends from out of town,” they do not appear to be benevolent, he wrote; perhaps they are neutral. Or they could be a threat to humanity.

Curious that, in this day of camera being in the hand of most people for much of the time they are at home, he hasn't shared any video of said orbs.

It's not that these are a novel thing associated with UFOs, though.   Stop me if you have heard this before, but there was a bit of a panic about green fireballs in the late 1940's being seen around remote military nuclear sites in the desert in the US.   The Wikipedia article about this is not very convincing, though - it gives the impression that it was likely all a case of panic over green meteors, which are not unknown.   But when you read the reports of the sightings, the trajectories of many sure don't sound like meteors.

I think I have read somewhere that some sightings were of orbs very close to the ground and looking as if they were centred on nuclear research buildings.   But Googling around isn't turning up a good example - I might have to go looking in my collection of UFO books on the shelf at home!

Certainly, it would not be surprising if some of these cases were ball lightning, or the equivalent of the "ground lights" like the Min Min from outback Australia and similar lights in other parts of the world, which turn up so often they do seem a natural electrical phenomena.

I suspect that Luis thought this was a good UFO-ish mystery story to pretend has affected his life - no one outside the house need corroborate.   Sure, if his family turn up on interviews appearing genuine and confirming more than one encounter with a green orb with seeming intentional movement, I might be intrigued and start believing him.   But I'm not taking it too seriously before then.