NUFORC Sighting 142325

Occurred: 2018-07-13 03:00 Local
Reported: 2018-07-19 23:35 Pacific
Duration: 4 minutes or more
No of observers: 1

Location: Birdsview, WA, USA

Shape: Unknown
Characteristics: Lights on object, Changed Colo

Tent visited by strange lights in the middle of the night on the Skagit River

I was camping with family at a private members-only campground on the Skagit River, near Birdsview, WA. Our camp site is located on the Skagit River, about 400 feet from the river and in mostly old growth forest. I have been camping at this location for 8+ years and at this campground for 25+ years and have never seen anything strange at night. We turned off all light sources and no one else was camping nearby. Our fire was out when we went to bed.

I was awakened by my young daughter sleeping next to me inside our large tent, who was having a bad dream. I noticed what appeared to be a bright moon beam hitting the top of out tent, but as it turned out, this was a night of a new moon (no visible moon). I turned around and then noticed white lights projected onto the outside of our tent, dancing near the roof of the tent. I could see leaf silhouettes from a nearby tree outside our tent. The overall effect of the projected lights was that it appeared to be fire-like, moving quickly and morphing rapidly into various wispy shapes. The color of the lights was white interspersed with light yellow.

I had the impression that somehow my camp fire had reignited and was casting shadows on our tent, but the height of the shadows and angle of the leaf silhouettes was too high to be such a reflection. After a minute the lights changed to two horizontal rows projected onto the outside of the tent, near the top of the tent wall where it meets the roof. These rows were about 4 feet long and 8 inches high, and extended past the edge of the tent. The rows were comprised of many rectangles (maybe 5 inches x 8 inches) with diffuse edges. I also noticed that other lights were projected onto the roof of the tent but I could not see any details since the dark maroon-red rain fly was covering the roof.

I had two ear plugs in that I then removed to check for noise, but the forest was extremely quiet and I could hear nothing. I examined the light projections closely and noticed that the rectangles were moving and overlapping each other, and each rectangle was a slightly different hue. The rectangle edges were rapidly moving and they appeared to be comprised of hundreds of frantically moving vertical lines, when I examined them for several seconds.

The lights then grew dim and stopped two or three times before coming back brighter and with additional rectangles extending up to three feet below the two horizontal rows. After another minute or two I climbed completely out of the sleeping bag and kneeled in the middle of the tent, waiting for some sort of escalation or attack. I did not wake up my wife or two young kids since I did not want them to see the lights and be scared. I thought about unzipping the front door of the tent and looking outside but this is where the lights were coming from and I feared that doing so might escalate things in a negative way.

As my daughter continued in a sleep-walking state and began whining and climbing toward the bottom of the sleeping bag, as if to get away from the lights (which later she said she never saw), the lights suddenly stopped and went pitch black. Then they started up again for a few seconds and stopped, and did this once or twice more before suddenly ending.

Within a few seconds my daughter then woke up and announced she needed to go to the bathroom outside. I was afraid to go outside so soon after this incident, but grabbed a flashlight and took her outside and behind the tent. I searched the sky, trees and area with the bright LED flashlight but noticed nothing unusual. The sky was amazingly clear and many stars were visible.

I also noticed that our fire had somehow reignited and a small flame was leaping out of a log and creating a strobe effect, which was visible well above our camp site since the light from the fire could be seen across the bottom of the old growth canopy. This fire-like strobe effect was one of the images projected on the tent wall when the lights first began.

I had the strange feeling that we were visited by something that resembled an animal that was scouting up and down the river for something. However, this "animal" somehow emitted lights with patterns. The animal may have seen the strobe effect from our fire and came down for a better look. This is just my impression.

We did camp in the same location for the next 5 nights, without anyone noticing the lights again. I did examine this situation for the possibility of a drone prank, but the old growth canopy would have been very difficult to navigate and the incident happened in the middle of the night. I checked with a few trusted local sources and no one had ever heard of drones in the area, or of similar incidents.

Please note that there have been several big foot sightings in this same area, and that an old Native American Indian burial ground resides in the area of our camp site, though the exact location is still unknown. We have installed a game camera to capture video or photos, in case the lights return.

Posted 2018-08-10

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