NUFORC Sighting 42366

Occurred: 1986-12-12 20:00 Local
Reported: 2005-02-25 09:28 Pacific
Duration: 2-3 minutes
No of observers: 0

Location: Pocahontas, AR, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Left a trail, Changed Colo

What appears to be 2 comets suddenly shoots overhead and turns into red, pulsating lights in a random formation; hovers 2-3 minutes.

Although this happened several years ago, I still remember it vividly. My family and I had just driven to a nearby community, called Engelberg, to look at the Christmas light display that this area is known for. The road that leads to Engelberg is a rural road without much traffic.

On our way back to town, while on this road, my younger brother, who was about 6 at the time, said "Hey, look, its two Haley's comets." Haley's comet had already come and gone earlier that year, so I said, before I even looked, "No, stupid, Haley's comet has already gone!" But about that time, we all looked over out the passenger's side of our van and saw what appeared to be two comets (complete with tails) in the distance.

No sooner had we fixed our eyes on them, they "shot" directly over our van. My dad stopped the van because we didn't know WHAT the heck it was. It was probably no more than 50 feet above the vehicle and it no longer resembled comets, but appeared to be random red glowing lights.

It was a clear night out, but the lights were hazy. We could not distinguish a craft shape, although whatever it was was hovering. We just stared at it for about 2-3 minutes. (although it seemed like time had stopped.) As we were watching it, my parents rolled down the windows to see if we could hear anything. We heard NOTHING! Only the wind. We all commented on the fact that this was just "weird."

My dad, trying to remain calm, came up with the idea that it must be some sort of special military plane that has special "silencers" on it. My mom said, "Yeah, but wouldn't we SEE a plane? It is DIRECTLY over our heads. Dad: "I have NO idea" Brother: "I'm scared".

At this point, the lights "shot off" to our left, in a blur and then disappeared. We sat there with our van in the middle of the road for a while after that just trying to absorb what we had just seen. When we got back home, we were watching the local news out of Jonesboro, Arkansas (KAIT) and the weatherman said that they had gotten lots of calls from the Pocahontas area about this phenomenon, and the weatherman said it was a meteor shower. However, later in the broadcast, the weatherman said they had just received a report that it was NOT a meteor shower after all, but was reported by the FAA to be a Russian Missle that had gone off course.

I would have believed the whole "meteor shower" story had they not come back and "blamed the Russians." I can still recall the exact date, even though it was almost 20 years ago because I wrote about it in my diary that night (which I still have) and my family still discusses it frequently. I am not sure what it was, but I DO know that meteors don't hover and the story about the Russian missle is just too lame. I think no one knows what it was....sure wish I knew, though!

Posted 2005-05-11