Large pulsing red/orange light that moved slowly across the sky before disappearing.

My brother and I were camping out in sleeping bags on the front porch - I was 7 and he was 9 at the time. We looked up and at about 45 degrees up there was a single large red/orange light that sort of pulsed slowly. It appeared to be quite large and moved very slowly across the sky. We ran in to get my stepfather since we were a bit scared and as we came back out, the light was just beginning to move where we couldn't see it because of the house awning and we ran around to the side of the house where we all saw it for another few seconds before it disappeared. One one of the pulses it just stayed dark. My stepfather called to report it to the police and their response at the time was that it was probably just a weather balloon but we were unconvinced having seen it with our own eyes.
Date is approximate.  PD