Terry and Hans Mauth say the object appeared to have a bright light shining upward. It drifted over the neighborhood, and then suddenly accelerated.
Sacramento resident Steve Brown also reported seeing a large glowing object. He says he watched the object for about 60 seconds before it took off at a high rate of speed.
"I seen like six bright orange colored lights," Kaye Pinlac of Stockton told ABCNews affiliate News 10. "They were almost like in a diamond or triangle shape. It was weird.
A witness out of Stockton, Kaye Pinlac, says he saw a group of glowing objects that appeared in formation. He found a video on YouTube of similar objects filmed that night over Hollywood.
Witness report on UFO over Hollywood Hills: "This was taken shortly after midnight January 1, 2014 from my apartment balcony facing the Hollywood Hills. The airspace that is normally full of Ghetto Birds was empty. The only things in the sky were fireworks and these..."
Often Chinese lanterns and fireworks are mistaken for UFOs. However, witnesses have said what they saw were not lanterns or balloons, and some local news reporters agree.