NUFORC Sighting 3133

Occurred: 1996-10-20 18:20 Local
Reported: 1998-02-15 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 15 Minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Wichita/Rose Hill, KS, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted other objects, Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

While driving observed 3 parallel bright red lights lighting in turn from left to right. These covered sizable area of night sky. Smaller red lights came out of one end of lights then disappeared. Soon after I witnessed white, clustered, oscillating lights and a separate set of multi-colored lights that formed a line parallel to the horizon. This line sank out of view, but the white, oscillating lights continued to sparkle and dissipate once every 5-10 seconds for approximately 30 seconds. I continued monitoring sky but saw nothing else. There were numerous reports of strange lights in the sky that night, from Winfield to Wichita.

At approximately 6:20 P.M. on October 30th, 1996 , I was driving east on 47th St. South out of Wichita Kansas. When I got to about 2 miles west of Rose Hill Rd. I noticed 3 bright red lights, east-south-east, about 30 degrees up from the horizon. They were lighting up, one at a time from right to left. They formed a parallel line to the horizon and covered a sizable section of the night sky. They lit up from right to left 5 to 6 times which took about 25 seconds. I then noticed smaller, what appeared to be sparkling red lights just to the right of the furthest southern light. They spread out and dissipated quickly. The bright lights made one more sweep from right to left and then stopped. I continued monitoring that section of sky as I headed east but the lights did not return. Ten minutes later I arrived home, 5 miles straight east of Rose Hill. I got out of my car and then noticed very bright white lights straight east. They appeared to be in a tight cluster and were oscillating. As I watched they broke apart and dissipated. I then noticed a multi-colored line of lights parallel to the horizon. They were approxiamelty 10 degrees above the horizon and slowly sank. They then disappeared. About 2 seconds later I observed more bright white, clusterered lights that were above where the multi-colored line appeared at maybe 15 degrees above the horizon. These disappeared only to light up again after about 5 seconds. They appeared to sparkle for a few seconds and then die down. After another 5-10 seconds the white lights returned for another few seconds and died down as they had done the first time. I waited 15-20 seconds then ran into my house to find another witness. When we returned, we monitored the sky for 10-15 minutes but saw no more lights. We did, however. see approximately 5-10 airplane lights flying in the area that I had seen the lights. I did not see these lights during the occurance. I called the Rose Hill police but they said they had no other reports of lights in the sky. The local nightly news ran a story about strange lights being reported by residents of Winfield Kansas that night, so I called the Winfield police. They said that there had been numerous reports of lights but that they had no explanation. There was also a small article about the incident in the Wichita Eagle newspaper the following day.

Posted 1999-01-28