Colored Lights: Does this sound familiar?

I'm going to relate an experience told to me by my wife. I'm hoping that someone reading this will have had a similar experience or heard of something like it. This event has never been publicly reported and is known by only a small number of family and close friends. The event occurred nearly 30yrs ago so some details are fuzzy:

Date: Late summer (August?) approximately 1977 or '78
Time: Dark, estimating 9pm
Weather: Cloudy
Location: Central Massachusetts

Details:

My wife was in her early teens and was in her front yard facing approximately NNE. She noticed soft, multi colored lights in the clouds at a distance of less than 100yds. The next thing she knew the lights had moved to the SSE and were located almost directly over her house and were somewhat brighter in intensity (she does not recall actually seeing them traverse the sky to that location and may have been looking in a different direction when they moved).

Suddenly a green light appeared at the ground right in front of her. She remarks at how unusual the color was. She describes the light as producing a colored circle on the ground with a diameter of approximately 3ft (just like a flashlight would if held vertically over the ground except without the fainter outer ring). This colored spot moved as if searching for something (my wife describes it as like someone looking for nightcrawlers with a flashlight). When she looked up to see the source from which the light was coming she could see the colored lights behind the clouds. This green light searched for a few minutes and then suddenly disappeared. An orange light appeared at that time a few feet away and continued 'searching' in the same manner. After a few minutes this light also went away and was replaced by a third color, different from the first two, but my wife cannot recall the color. This also 'searched' for several minutes. The enitre area the lights searched was perhaps 12foot square and located entirely in her front yard and right in front of her. After the third color searched for several minutes the other colors reappeared and all began searching the same 12ft x 12ft area at the same time. As they did this she describes the searching pattern as becoming hectic and that the intensity of the spots slowly dimmed as the diameter of the spots increased (she describes it as if they were pulling away and jiggling around at the same time). When she looked up to the sky she saw that the colored lights had moved back toward the NNE. She recalls being very frightened by the lights. She ran into the house to get someone else to come out and see the lights. Her older brother came out and saw them in the clouds but told my wife they were the 'northern lights'. He still recalls them but believes they were the northern lights (NOTE: It is exceptionally rare for the aurora to be seen this far south and of course, could never be seen through the clouds. Her brother has actually never seen the aurora and was making a supposition on the origin of the lights. He never saw them on the ground). The entire time period of the experience is estimated at 20-30min.

At the time my wife had heard of UFO's and the abduction phenomenon but had never done any reading about it and thought it was crazy. However, when she witnessed the lights on the ground she recalls having a real fear of being abducted and being 'seen' by the lights. She does not believe she has been abducted but feels the lights must have been 'UFO related' due to their unusual nature and unknown origin.


Again, I'm hoping this event may jog someone's memory of a similar experience.

No one? Does anyone have an opinion as to what it could have been?

I don't have any idea what this could have been but was there any sound associated with the lights?

I suppose the lights on the ground could have been a reflection of whatever was in the sky. Does your wife remember if the ground happened to be wet?

jtma508,

This sounds like a really interesting sighting.

To bad its late for me now , or I would look up the exact link. But anyway , checkout Project Hessdalen.

I think you would find something very interesting to you and your wife. A very similar yet somewhat toned down event recorded by Scientists.

Thanks for the feedback.

Zep Tepi: No, there was no sound associated with the incident at all. And although she cannot positively say that the ground was not wet, she does not recall that it was.

Shaman: I researched Hessdalen and found it interesting. From what I read and the pictures it doesn't seem to be the same phenomenon. Those are mostly point lights in the sky and rather shortlived.

What strikes me as odd in my wife's experience is how the lights projected on the ground. Clearly, any number of possibilities could account for the multicolored lights in the clouds. But she describes the colored circles on the ground as being well defined and nearly perfect (as far as she could see --- she is an artist so has a better than average eye). This would suggest that the lights originated above or within the clouds and were somehow projected through the clouds. First, the fact that the projected pattern was a nearly perfect circle suggests that the source was directly overhead. I would also have thought any light passing through the clouds would tend to diffuse. If a laser light was passed through a cloud would it be able to project a circle on the ground? And would it produce a colored disk of 3ft diameter?

The other aspect that is significant to me is her reaction. She remembers being truly frightened and especially concerned about being abducted. She can't tell me where that fear came from. Why did the presence of the lights make her fear abduction of all things?

Anyway, thanks for your input. I'm hoping that with all our posters and lurkers here on ATS someone would have had or heard of a similar kind of experience. The search continues...

wish it was me who saw that....I would have moved myself into the light in hopes that it was me they were looking for !!

jtma508,


There is one instance from Hessdalen in which a "laser" type of light was beemed on to the ground near a person from an unknown location in the sky. It was also cloudy in this case similar to your wifes.

www.hessdalen.org...

See section 3.10 F10-lights

Monday 20 February at 6.12 pm: Red light

Maybe the most "unexplainable" happening was the red light on the ground. It happened on Monday 20 February. Leif Havik was alone in the caravan. He was dressing. Åge Moe (a farmer from Hessdalen) and Edvin Kværnes (also from Hessdalen), had just arrived. They waited outside the caravan. Moe at the north side, beside the door into the caravan, and Kv'rnes at the south side. They should all go into Øyungneset, to see the lights from that place. Just when Leif went out of the caravan, a red light moved around his feet and disappeared. The duration was a few seconds. Moe said: "Look at the reflection". That was the only explanation he could figure out aat that time. Leif saw at once that it was the same type of light as from our laser. The laser we had used was at that time in Oslo.

[edit on 19-1-2006 by lost_shaman]