NUFORC Sighting 70308

Occurred: 2009-05-31 21:40 Local
Reported: 2009-06-01 12:05 Pacific
Duration: 15 to 20 seconds
No of observers: 3

Location: Fostoria, OH, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

first sighting was 8 lights forming a V formation then vanished. Second sighting was 4 lights (V shaped again)

05/31/2009 Approximately 9:40 pm Fostoria, OH 44830 Latitude: 41° 9'39.59"N Longitude: 83°25'15.38"W Weather: Clear, 65° F, no wind My wife and I were sitting in our backyard having a campfire when I looked up to the sky. I was just about to comment on how clear the night was when I noticed some lights to the north heading directly towards us. Keeping my eyes on what I was witnessing I pointed to the lights and said to my wife, "Look up, look up, look up."

What I saw were two banks of four lights. Each of the lights was parallel to one another and they appeared to have a similar formation to a flock of geese, or the delta formation flown by military aircraft. The individual lights weren’t round, but linear in appearance. They weren’t bright white, but rather dim and tanish color. Each bank of lights was swept back to the next, as if they were mounted to the underside of the wings of a fighter jet. Four lights on the starboard wing, four on portside. The lights didn’t blink. They didn’t get brighter or dimmer, just a constant, steady light.

As the lights got closer, the formation became more disheveled. When they were almost directly overhead, they stopped moving in a southerly direction, hovered for a few seconds, then headed northward, where they just came from, reforming the original formation. Only this time, four of the lights were gone and the remaining four continued north. As they flew away it appeared that they were either turning off one by one, or they merged into one single light before vanishing. It looked more like they merged into a single light which then disappeared.

Whatever the lights were, they appeared to be low enough for the campfire light to illuminate them (or at least appear so). While my mind was trying to rationalize what I was seeing, I thought they might be a flock of birds with their undersides getting lit up by the fire. My wife quickly told me, “Those aren’t birds. Birds don’t glow in the dark”. And she was right, those were not birds. The whole spectacle lasted for what seemed like fifteen to twenty seconds and we didn’t hear a thing. The object(s) were completely silent.

After witnessing this, I went into the house to describe what we had just seen to my kids. My wife stayed outside watching the night sky for any more signs of anything unusual. A couple minutes later my wife came inside and said that she had just seen a shooting star off to the east. She said that she had never seen a tail on a shooting star as long as the one she just witnessed. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the encounter that we had just seen, but I figured I’d throw it into this story anyhow. We seen no more “meteorites” for the rest of the evening and hadn’t seen any prior to this one.

My wife, son and myself went back outside to watch the sky some more. We noticed an unusually high number of aircraft flying in the sky. I knew that they were planes because they had flashing beacons and the usual look of planes flying at night. We saw three or four aircraft to the north, a couple more to the west, a couple to the south and east. They all appeared to be flying in their own directions, no formation of any sort and they didn’t go away. You could look in any direction and see planes.

About ten minutes after the sighting my neighbor got home from work. I was describing to him what my wife and I had just seen when he looked off to the west and said, “What the hell?” I looked over and I said, “That’s it! That’s what we just saw!” A bank of four lights was flying low, heading in a southerly direction again, coming from the north. This time the lights appeared to be much farther away from us. They weren’t directly over us this time. The lights were moving pretty fast and then they turned and traveled in a westerly direction before converging into one light and disappearing again.

We all kept scanning the sky discussing what we had seen, trying to come up with some logical explanation. My neighbor went inside to call some of his friends and he told his dad what we had seen. His dad came outside and we talked about the lights. While discussing the evening’s events I looked up and saw a single light flying extremely fast through the sky. There were no flashing lights and the object (which I think was a military jet) was flying in a southeastern direction. I’m assuming the light was the afterburner from the aircraft. It disappeared behind my house and I lost site of it. The same aircraft, or maybe another one, then appeared from the same general direction, moving slower and in a northerly direction as if the aircraft we just saw slowed down and turned left.

What we had seen did not appear to be "normal" our geographical area. We’ve spent many nights outside with and without campfires and never seen anything like this. The sightings of the unidentifiable groups of lights and the large number of aircraft in the vicinity made this evening very unique to say the least.

We didn't get any video or photographs of the object(s). They never reappeared once we had the camera in-hand. I hope my MS Paint sketch at least gives a decent depiction of what I witnessed.

Posted 2009-06-09

© 2023 National UFO Reporting Center. All rights reserved. Use or reproduction within any application without written consent is prohibited.