A Brentry man called police when he saw a "bizarre" UFO - only to discover it was a string of Elon Musk's satellites.
The witness phoned 101 after spotting six or seven white lights moving in a "convoy" over his house and Filton Airfield before disappearing beyond trees.
Although he later found out it was a group of SpaceX satellites, police said they encourage calls from anyone concerned about suspicious activity.
The 38-year-old full-time carer - who wishes to remain anonymous - had been in his garden at about 11.50pm last Saturday (May 22) when he caught sight of the spectacle.
He emailed Bristol Live shortly afterwards: "I am only writing this in the hope that I was not the only person to witness this, if not then I might need to see a shrink."
The dad wrote he had been stunned by the lights moving silently in a straight line, but they were out of view by the time he had run into his house to get his phone.
"It is the strangest thing I have ever seen," he added. "They were not birds, and planes tend not to fly in convoy in a perfect line.
"Probably a perfectly normal explanation... but God I would like to hear it. Would be nice if you could tell me if there have been other reports as this was very weird."
He postscripted the email by clarifying it was "not a joke" and the experience had "properly upset" him, adding: "I could do with hearing from you about any other reports."
Bristol Live had not received any similar reports. When we called the man on Monday, he was still audibly shaken as he recounted what he had seen in more detail.
"It was dead clear," he said. "It came from the city centre direction, travelling north towards Patchway.
"I could see these equally spaced little dots which looked like stars, travelling along. Usually when there's a plane in the sky, you have time to make a cup of tea and it's still there afterwards.
"But these things travelled over the house pretty quickly. They were there and gone in less than 30 seconds, so they were either really fast or quite low down.
"I thought maybe it was people playing silly buggers with drones, maybe to freak out people like me, but you would normally hear drones.
"If it was something falling through the atmosphere, like the breakup of a satellite into six or seven bits, then you'd see the trail because they'd be flaring up in the atmosphere. I ruled all these things out."
The man, who says he was sober at the time, recalls initially thinking: "This is awesome."
He said he was "really excited" and expected many other people to have filmed it. But a scan of social media drew a blank.
"It was so bizarre, so blatant, and on a Saturday night over Bristol - surely there must have been a tonne of people who saw it?" he said.
"I was now thinking, 'Did I imagine it? Is it a reflection in my glasses? This is surreal.'
"I kept going out to see if it had come back into view. I was up until 2am going in and out, I was looking online."
The man said he "agonised" over whether to call police, but eventually decided to do so.
"If I didn't tell someone, I would always think, 'What if?' If I just kept quiet about it, and everyone else who saw it kept quiet, then no one would believe it if one person came forward.
"I phoned 101 and I said, 'I know this sounds weird but all I want to know is if anyone else has seen it.'
"I told the call handler I didn't know who else to call, and I knew I was probably wasting their time, but it really freaked me out.
"All I wanted was to give a report, so if they got four or five reports of the same thing in the area, they would corroborate. That way, the reports wouldn't look like a barmy fat man in his back garden seeing something that was not there.
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"The handler asked if I had any footage, and I said I didn't catch it. They said, 'If you see anything else, get back to us.'
"I told them, 'I would have handled this call exactly as you did.' Because how else do you handle it?"
The following day, the man emailed Bristol Live again, this time with some relief. He believed he had found his answer, through a conversation with someone on Youtube.
The witness wrote: "[The Youtube user] researched it and found out it is a SpaceX satellite train. He sent me a link and the video was exactly what I saw, a number of lights in a line, equally spaced travelling over the sky at night.
"It's a very new technology and I'm not the first person to have reacted in this way. Mystery solved thanks to YouTube."
He added he was "very happy" to have got to the bottom of the mystery.
Tesla magnate Musk has launched more than 1,440 SpaceX satellites for the 'Starlink' project to improve global internet coverage.
Avon and Somerset police believe reports such as the one made by the Brentry man could potentially relate to drone activity, though in this case it appears to have been a SpaceX sighting.
If close to an airport, for example, drone activity would be a matter the force would like to monitor, so they would not deter people from reporting anything they think is suspicious.
Starlink could eventually see as many as 42,000 SpaceX satellites launched – a prospect which has sparked criticism from astronomers.
A police spokesman said: "Anyone concerned about ongoing suspicious activity is encouraged to contact us on our non-emergency number 101 or, if there is an immediate threat to life, on 999.
“To report suspicious activity which isn’t ongoing visit www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/report.”
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