NUFORC Sighting 99892

Occurred: 2013-07-04 21:51 Local
Reported: 2013-07-07 11:24 Pacific
Duration: 46 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Captiva, FL, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

I saw 3 amber lights like I've reported before, plus an extremely bright "slow" flash of light

4th of July UFO sightings on the south end of Captiva Island, FL, 33924

Although this is my sixth sighting in a series of sightings that started on Captiva on Monday, June 24, 2013, two weeks ago, and I’m filing it our of sequence, I felt it was important to file now it in light of what Peter Davenport, Director, The National UFO Reporting Center, wrote me relating that there were an unusually large number of 4th of July sightings that “WERE NOT” fireworks, that the Center has just received..

My first report, which was two hours in duration, was filed on 7/6/2013, with MUFON, and then with the Center. I will file the other reports, in addition to yet another sighting a friend and I had last night.

SUMMARY - I was on the beach on the south end of Captiva Island when at 9:51 p.m. I saw two solid amber lights of the exact color of the 6 that I watched for just over 2 hours on June 24.

At about 10:05, a third redish-orange light came on above the first two (I just reported on those 2 hour sightings of up to six amber and one white UFOs starting with key words “Long duration UFO Sightings” with maps).

The lights went out at 10:12. The lights went on and off as if on a dimmer switch.

At 10:36 a nearly blinding white light appeared just west of due north over the gulf of Mexico, just above a cloud layer that was on the horizon.

The white light slowly came on like on a dimmer switch and appeared to be at least 5 miles away. The duration of the white light sighting was about 1 minute.

I am a marine biologist, 60 years old, and a scientist first.

These lights were exactly due north of me, just off horizontal of each other, and about a 3 finger-width-at-arm-distance apart from each other. The lights were initially about the width of a hand at arms length (9 degrees above my eye level horizon) above a tree line, then slowly drifted apart about 2 hand-widths and then drifted down to just treetop level.

The trees (Australian Pines) are about 70 feet high and approximately 3.5 football-field-lengths away from where I was standing that night.

The treetops are 4 degrees above my eye level horizon. I used a “speed square” and a yard stick to measure degrees (see attached photos). My eye level is 5 feet 6 inches. Using this simple device one with mathematical background should be able to figure out what the actual height of a craft/light is.

The beach I was standing on is about four feet above sea level. I estimate that whatever it was that was making the lights was approximately 7 to 8 miles distant, and at the high! est point they were a guesstimated 6,000 feet in the air; at the lowest about 3,000 feet or less.

There were fireworks at the beach at North Captiva Island 8 miles to the north of me. What I saw WAS NOT fireworks, as I’ve seen these lights before with a friend. And because of their downward and left to right movements, I most seriously doubt they were “Chinese lanterns.”

I watched them at times with 10X42 binoculars, but could not discern a craft. During the first five to six minutes first the object on the right turned off – as if on a dimmer switch – then the one to the left turned off.

After about 30 seconds the both came back on and slowly drifted down to tree top level – they were also moving left and right at least 10 degrees. And then both went off again.

A couple of minutes later they both slowly came on at the same height they were initially. Then a third red-orange light came on to the right and just above the other two craft. For some reason I thought that they were observing the fireworks, which were going off about a hand width to the left of them, and at least two hand-widths below them.

The last I saw before the lights went of for the duration of when I was observing them (another 45 minutes….of getting chewed up by no-see-ums), they appeared to be drifting to my left, going lower, and toward the fireworks.

The fireworks were over by 10:15 or so.

Shortly after the main lights went off I observed, for the fourth time since June 25, what I call a “flasher,” in exactly the same area where I saw the lights. I will describe “flashers” in my next reports.

I saw, “out of the corner of my eye,” (exactly in the same fashion one would find the 7 sisters, which are a tad too dim to see directly), straight ahead of me and in the same area the first lights were, a brief, dim, “strobe flash.”

I already had learned to train my binocs on such areas, and saw, well, a flasher, which comprises a rapid series of strobe-like flashes which are about a quarter or just less the duration of a normal strobe light flash, take up pretty much the entire view+ a tad of my 10X 42 field glasses. Like I said, they are just a tad too dim to see with the naked eye, except for the initial flash, which one would think is eye trickery.

I got lucky again this time because I had some practice in spotting them before in binoculars, and watched them for maybe a 10 full seconds (actually a long time to hold them centered in binocs), before I lost them from view.

I do not know if it they just “blinked out,” and I could not find them again in my binocs – again, a difficult thing to do because they both take up the entire viewing field, and can’t be seen easily with the naked eye unless you are lucky enough to see the out of the “corner of your eye” and know how to immediately train your binocs on them.

At 10:36, about a half hour after the fireworks were over, a relatively dim white light “came on” like one would slowly turn on a dimmer switch, and after about 30 seconds became from just a tad of light to “blindingly” bright, like it was very rapidly – very rapidly – coming straight at me. I got VERY frighten when it was at it’s brightest, like it was no more than 20 feet in front of me, and was in the process of turning to the right and running like hell, when it immediately dimmed down and disappeared.

The whole event lasted no more that a minute. I had been, from the start of this event, flashing my 6-volt “lantern” at the objects from the beginning, including “SOS” signals, just like I did in my first report.

I think I stayed at the beach for a while longer after the brightest light came on, but I’m not really sure as of this writing two days later. End of report.

NUFORC Note:

One of approximately 20 reports from the same source, submitted over the course of a few weeks. PD

Posted 2013-07-14