It started as a whisper among the usual Sunday morning café crowd at Molly’s Muffins on Main Street—an unusual sighting near the old Evergreen Park gazebo, that forgotten relic nestled between the library and the town’s vintage clock tower. By Monday, chatter had spilled into online groups, thread by thread unraveling and reknotting speculations about the strange, glowing orbs spotted hovering just above the gazebo’s weathered shingles. Yes, in Chesterburgh, where the sky is mostly predictable and the lights in City Hall more often left on than off, something unexpected can still catch us off guard.

    As your self-appointed lens on our town’s overlooked oddities, I headed down to Evergreen Park just before sunset. The first half of the gazebo is as you’d expect: a little worse for wear, with peeling mint-green paint and that suspicious beer bottle someone never quite got around to tossing in the recycle bin. Yet the other half shimmered with an eerie, unplaceable light, soft and pulsing, as if teasing an audience just on the edge of vision.

    A few feet away, an elderly gentleman with a telescope perched on a tripod—never one to shy away from town gossip—introduced himself as Harold Pettinger, amateur astronomer and now, apparently, orb spotter. “They appeared right when the sky was turning that mauve shade," he said, tilting his head toward the fading light. "First I thought it was some sort of interference, a reflection maybe. But no, they’re definitely there – hovering, drifting slowly eastward.”

    Harold’s casual certainty was infectious, lending a somber, almost hallowed aura to the moment. Soon, a smattering of curious onlookers had gathered—cameras raised, phones buzzing, whispers filling the air with equal parts excitement and skepticism. Among them was Mayra, co-owner of the local bookstore and self-described “professional puzzle solver.” "It’s like our town is sending us a message," she mused, eyes fixed on the glowing shapes. “Or maybe it’s just the streetlights reflecting off the dew on the maple leaves. But wouldn’t it be more fun if it was something else?”

    Chesterburgh has always thrived on a healthy blend of mystique and mundanity. From the passive-aggressive “Please Don’t Feed the Pigeons” signs that somehow also sported crumbs taped beneath them, to the unwitting community art that emerges when the weather does a number on old posters and paint, we savor these small mysteries as much as a baker’s dozen of Molly’s best croissants. Yet these orb sightings invite us to peer beyond even the familiar layers of our town’s visual landscape—and that is something new.

    Neighbors began speculating wildly. Could the orbs be some sort of environmentally conscious street art, activated by dusk to remind us of light pollution? Or maybe a prank from one of the local tech incubators, experimenting with miniature drones disguised with LED arrays? The latter seemed plausible, especially given Chesterburgh’s recent whispers of startup fever brewing beneath the surface of our quaint streets.

    Intrigued by the sudden proliferation of questions, I reached out to City Hall for official comment. The spokesperson, a visibly tired city clerk named Denise, was delighted by the attention but stayed firmly in the realm of “unexplained phenomena.” “We have no reports or permits issued for light displays at Evergreen Park," she said firmly. "I think it’s best we all keep a close eye and, if anything suspicious occurs, report it. Meanwhile, enjoy the show, but be safe.”

    That last line perhaps loosely translated as, "Don’t go poking around with flashlights in the bushes," a gentle reminder that mystery is always safest enjoyed at a respectful distance. Which makes the layers behind our glowing orbs