NUFORC Sighting 89061

Occurred: 2012-05-19 23:00 Local
Reported: 2012-05-19 23:31 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Palatine, IL, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

2 Red flashing lights

Somewhere around 11pm or midnight, my friend and I stepped out of his house for a smoke. I noticed a flashing red light in the sky and figured it was a plane, since there are always planes from O’Hare in the area. When I looked closer I saw that it had no other lights, it was simply a flashing red light which I don’t remember ever seeing on any plane before.

Then I told my friend to look and he saw it too, it was quite obvious. We watched as it flew in a wide arc towards us. As I said I see plenty of planes all the time. It seemed to be at a pretty high altitude, not at a really high cruising altitude but definitely not low like a landing plane would be. It seemed to be moving pretty fast too.

Once it was facing us, we could make out that there were 2 blinking red lights side by side, clearly one singular object. Eventually it went directly overhead and we could see that there were 2 much dimmer lights in roughly the same places as the red ones. These lights were blue or green, one was slightly brighter than the other. From far away you couldn’t see these lights at all. I couldn’t make out any kind of shape of the craft.

When it was travelling overheard we started to hear a jet engine, but it was pretty quiet and seemed to be emanating from far behind the aircraft, I assume because it was travelling at a high speed.

It went on traveling west to east, in the direction of Lake Michigan until it was out of sight. My friend and I waited outside for 5 or 10 minutes when I noticed the same flashing red lights again, at the same altitude, but this time they were traveling in the opposite direction. It seemed to make the same wide arc as before but in reverse, eventually flying out of sight to the south or southeast.

Currently there is the nato meeting going on downtown and the last few days I’ve heard plenty of military helicopters around this area and these lights just make it much weirder. I can’t say for sure that these lights are related but it doesn’t seem like a coincidence, especially considering that whatever I saw was apparently staying over the area. I did find it weird that the aircraft would turn around like that instead of simply circling around though.

Posted 2012-05-29

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