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Beginning in late 2025 and continuing into December, residents near Brooyar State Forest in Queensland, Australia have been witnessing a strange and unsettling phenomenon. According to reports published on December 4, 2025, dozens of glowing orange lights have been rising silently from the forest at night, drifting through the trees, hovering in formation, and blinking in and out as if following some unknown pattern. For many locals, these orbs have become a weekly occurrence — and no one can explain what they are.
The primary observer behind the recent wave of attention is Katy McCallum, a store owner in the small town of Kilkivan and a former police officer. She has seen these lights so many times that she now keeps her phone at the ready after sundown. Some nights, she says, as many as fifty orange orbs appear at once, floating upward from deep within the Blacksnake mountain range.
Her descriptions are chilling. The lights shimmer warm orange and gold. Some drift slowly like drifting lanterns, while others pulse or hover in place. She has watched them blink on and off with a rhythmic pattern that seems too deliberate to be an accident of nature. The forest canopy glows when they rise, lighting the branches from below as if someone were shining spotlights from under the trees.
McCallum is not the only witness. Residents across the region, some many miles apart, have reported the same lights appearing along the same ridgelines. People are drawn outside by a sense of curiosity that quickly turns to unease. The lights are silent, steady, and move in ways that do not match drones, flares, helicopters, or any common aircraft.
When the lights first appeared, many assumed they were military exercises from Camp Kerr, a training base more than 50 kilometers away. That theory gained traction when the Australian Defence Force stated that the orange lights were likely illumination flares used in training drills.
But McCallum strongly disagrees, and she has evidence to back her up.
She points out that illumination flares burn brightly, fall downward, and usually leave remnants like canisters or spent casings. The Queensland lights, however, rise from the forest floor rather than fall from the sky. They move slowly upward, hover, drift sideways, and brighten the treetops from below. Flares do not behave this way. They do not remain suspended or drift against the wind. They also do not appear in groups of dozens at the same height and speed.
McCallum has even chartered a helicopter survey of the forest to look for debris from flares or any sign of human activity that could explain the lights. After hours of searching, she and the pilot found nothing — no burn marks, no canisters, no equipment, not even a campsite. The forest was untouched.
This only deepened her certainty: whatever she and others are seeing is not simply military training.
Witness videos show the lights in clusters, rising like glowing embers that refuse to fade. In some footage, they drift sideways in perfect parallel tracks, spaced evenly apart. In others, they disappear all at once, as if someone flipped a switch. Occasionally a single orb will break away, brighten sharply, and vanish in a snap of orange light.
The behavior is not random. It feels intentional.
As more sightings spread, so did theories. Some locals think they could be experimental drones. Others suggest ball lightning, though experts point out that ball lightning is rare, short lived, and does not appear dozens at a time. One atmospheric scientist commented that even if the lights were some unknown plasma phenomenon, the consistent patterns seen in the Queensland lights would still be difficult to explain.
Then there is the most unsettling theory: the lights are not natural at all.
Orb sightings have long been associated with UFO reports worldwide. Many describe glowing spheres that move with purpose, maintain altitude, and appear in groups. Some UFO researchers argue that spheres are one of the most common UFO shapes ever recorded. They often appear in forests, near mountains, or along remote regions — all features of the Queensland sightings.
The location itself is interesting. Brooyar State Forest is dense, rugged terrain filled with cliffs, gorges, and dramatic elevation shifts. It is the sort of place where an unexplained phenomenon could occur for years without widespread notice. Small towns like Kilkivan are used to wildlife noises at night. A quiet glowing orb rising from the trees could easily go unreported unless someone happened to be watching.
But McCallum has been watching closely. She has recorded dozens of videos, each showing the same behavior at the same locations. Her videos show the forest flashing with pulses of orange light as the orbs rise. One clip shows a cluster appearing to communicate, blinking in a synchronized pattern that repeats three times before fading out.
If these were flares, she says, they would drift downward, smoke, sputter, or leave traces of descent. Instead, the orbs lift upward and gently disappear — often straight up into the dark.
The Australian Defence Force has not offered further clarification beyond their initial flare statement, and many locals feel the explanation does not match what they are seeing. This gap between official explanations and lived experience is exactly where mystery thrives.
And now the story has spread far beyond Queensland.
As videos circulate, viewers around the world are struck by the eerie calm of the lights. There is no sound. No mechanical hum. No crackling flame. Just silent orbs rising from the treetops of a remote Australian forest.
Could they be an unknown atmospheric event? A swarm of unconventional drones? A natural electrical phenomenon we have not yet understood? Or something even stranger, moving with intention through the night sky?
At this point, no one has answers.
What is certain is that the lights keep appearing. Some nights there are only a few. Other nights the sky above the forest becomes a constellation of orange orbs drifting like ghosts above the mountain range.
For now, the sightings continue and the mystery deepens. And as long as the lights rise from the forest without explanation, Queensland’s nighttime horizon may never feel ordinary again.