I saw one much like the OP describes in 1997 or '98. I lived in a small town in Iowa then, and I was walking the dog one night when I happened to glance up just as the thing started to burn. It began near the northern horizon and came zooming along until it was just about directly overhead before it finished burning up. The whole thing took maybe three or four seconds. It was amazing; it left a trail of golden-colored sparks behind it.
The night was so quiet, and the visual sensation so strong, that I actually hallucinated that I could hear the thing sizzling through the atmosphere, even as I knew that was ridiculous.
I was walking on a country road with my mother and sister late one night in about 1989, and I saw and heard one.
This thing was almost flare-like, as it seemed to move a bit more slowly than the smaller “shooting stars”. It was orange, it left a cloud trail, and yes, it crackled. It was a few short, staccato bursts of sound. Not terribly loud, but unmistakable nonetheless.
I saw one of these things once long before I knew they existed. I was sleeping at the base of the grand canyon so there was zero light polution and I could see satelites all over the place. I was actually watching this particularly fast satellite when I noticed it was getting brighter. Then it got really bright and I thought something was going to happen. Then it just faded away to as dim as the other satelites. For years I wondered what it was, until someplace here it was described.
No offense, TheLoadedDog, but you couldn’t possibly have heard it unless you heard it a good bit after you saw it. It had to be at least several miles up in the atmosphere; if it was two miles up (and it was almost certainly more), it would take ten seconds for the sound to reach you.
You don’t say in your post, but I get the impression you “heard” it at the same time you saw it. If that’s the case, I suspect your hearing it was an auditory hallucination like mine.
If the sound came later, though, then I believe you.
There have been numerous reports of hissing sounds heard simultaneously with meteors, even though any sound from the meteor should have taken a long time to reach the observer. See the section labeled “Sound” in this Wikipedia entry:
Nobody has a good explanation for this. Some have conjectured that the passage of the meteor through the atmosphere causes electromagnetic radiation which somehow people can hear. (I just report this. I don’t necessarily agree with it or make any attempt to explain it, so spare me your snide comments.)
