NUFORC Sighting 71093

Occurred: 2009-07-15 23:00 Local
Reported: 2009-07-15 01:09 Pacific
Duration: seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: South Bend, WA, USA

Shape: Rectangle

Rectangular pattern appears and disappears after bright flash

I smoke outside and make it a point to sky watch at night when smoking. There is very little light pollution in this small town in the woods and the sky was clear. A couple of nights ago about 11pm I saw a bright white flash, three or four times the intensity of a bright star. It was 5 or 10 degrees from directly overhead. I continued to watch the sky and saw another flash several seconds later in a different spot. I extrapolated to the south to where I thought it would be for the next flash and neither the time nor the trajectory stayed the same. The last flash was to the southwest of the second flash. It took longer and did not travel as far across the sky. I thought maybe I was seeing shooting stars coming right at me. I had never seen that before, but maybe.

Tonight I saw the same white intense flash but only once. This one was maybe 30 degrees from overhead to the south. Then a second later, not in the same spot but in the same vicinity, I clearly saw a faint gray sharp rectangular pattern. It was about 1 inch by 1/4 inch at arms length. It had about 5 or 6 parallel lines running the long way inside of the rectangle and seemed to appear and disappear just that fast. The rectangle lasted longer than the flashes but less than a second. The long sides seemed to be well defined but the short sides were a little fuzzy. Maybe the parallel lines just ended evenly and the length to width ratio gave the appearance of a rectangle. I can’t say the rectangle appeared to be a craft but it was bizarre. Neither the flashes nor the rectangle are anything I have seen before.

Posted 2009-08-05