Move over, Roswell. South Orange County is recording its own share of UFO sightings.
Several residents have reported sightings to the Orange County Sheriff's Department in recent months. And word has even reached a Canadian UFO researcher who has posted information about the incidents on his website.
In one case, witnesses reported seeing glowing disks zigzagging through trees and hovering above the Aliso Viejo Town Center at night. About a yard in diameter and studded with flashing lights, the four UFOs dance around one another in the night sky.
True enough, these flying saucers aren't a top-secret military project. But they aren't being piloted by Martians either.
The saucers are made in the garages of Gaylon Murphy and Steve Zingali, who get their kicks shocking people and hope to earn a few bucks hawking their remote-controlled saucers. After all, a few UFO sightings can only be good for business.
"We fly them in formation. It's pretty funny," said Murphy, a cardiovascular surgeon and Aliso Viejo resident. "People stop, people scream; one cabdriver ran his car up off the road."
Nick Peterson was stunned when he saw one of the disks fly past his girlfriend's upstairs apartment.
"I thought, that can't be a UFO, can it?" he said. "It's pretty weird."
The disks are made of foam and weigh about a pound. Each runs on a 7.4-volt lithium battery and has a propeller.
On weekends, Murphy flies the disks in Aliso Viejo, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel.
He and Zingali, a facilities engineer and Mission Viejo resident, have sold four of the gizmos at $1,000 each and concede that their streaking light show is part hobby, part promotion.
"It's good marketing," he said.
The Canadian UFO website, which logs oddities from supposed saucer sightings to alleged alien abductions and offers an assortment of paranormal literature, indicates that the homemade disks have captured the attention -- and the imagination -- of both the skeptical and the true believer.
"I don't know how to say this exactly but ... ," one San Clemente resident reported, before going on to detail his UFO sighting outside an Aliso Viejo movie theater in January.
"What I saw today had a brightness that was beautiful to see," another witness reported. One sky watcher said the object looked like a "glowing Nerf football."
Not everyone, however, is as enchanted.
