NUFORC Sighting 156869

Occurred: 2013-07-16 02:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2020-06-02 17:43 Pacific
Duration: 1 hour
No of observers: 1

Location: St. Johns (Canada)(in-flight), NL, Canada

Shape: Rectangle

Several years ago, I was flying solo on a domestic flight from JFK to Frankfurt, Germany. It was July of 2014, I think. And the flight took off in the early evening.

We had TVs in the seatbacks, and I enjoyed following the planes’ course as it headed up the New England coast. I had a window seat that faced North as the plane headed northeast. At around midnight (I can rarely sleep on planes), we were just over St John, Newfoundland. The cabin lights were off and I could see the last dim lights of North America fall behind us. I am an amature astronomer so I was enjoying the stars out my window.

About an hour later the flight attendant asked all passengers on the left side of the plane (windows facing north more or less) to close our shades. “The sun will be rising soon and it will shine brightly through your windows”, she said. But it was only 1:00 or 1:30 AM! She came around a few minutes later and really made sure that we had those shades closed. I kept mine open a few inches and kept looking out.

Shortly after the announcement, I noticed what looked like a flare or rocket rising above the far horizon. It was maybe 100 miles in the distance, back in the direction of Canada. It was brief, in duration, and made a short orange arc in the darkness outside my window. It was likely military exercises (I discovered weeks later that a NATO base is out there).

What I witnessed within an hour after this event was very strange. Out my window was a craft of some sort, with 3 rows of pulsating colored lights -blue, red, and yellow/white. was following us about ¼ to 1/2 mile away, slightly behind us. Each row of lights flashed in quick succession -fraction of seconds. It was almost hypnotizing. It was too dark to make out a shape or size of the craft, but I could guess by the light pattern that it craft was less than 100 feet long and a height one third the length.

It would drift behind us at times, out of my limited field of view, then reappear, just to our rear. The pulsating lights seemed to reverse their top-middle-bottom row pattern at least once (though it could have been my eyes by now).

After close to an hour of this the object fell behind and disappeared for good. All I saw were stars until, 3-4 hours later, dawn began.

Sincerely,

Posted 2020-06-25