NUFORC Sighting 18970

Occurred: 2001-08-03 00:30 Local
Reported: 2001-08-14 00:00 Pacific
Duration: appro 10min
No of observers: 3

Location: Mercer, WI, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Electrical or magnetic effects

multiple lights moving in unison at distinct angles

I was traveling with a friend north on US Hwy 51 on the night of August 2, 2001 the sky was completely clear, and as usual full of stars, with a full moon over my left shoulder as I drove north. At approximately 00:45 on the 3rd about 3-4 miles south of Mercer WI. and directly infront of us above the road about 1 mile in the distance 3 BRIGHT Yellow -Orange lights appeared. They were "stacked" directly above each other. The size would be comparable to the size of your thumb nail when held at arms length, each light appeared to be about 3 - 4 times their diameter apart. The objects were framed by the trees that lined both sides of the road in this area and they appeared to be about 1/4 mile above the ground. They almost appeared to be a ball of flame as I tried to figure out what they could be. We approached for about a half minute at which time I pulled over to the side of the road to get my camera from the trunk of the car. At that time the objects were about 1/4 to 1/2 mile away, but as I pulled over to the side of the road the objects moved straight up and the distance between each of the objects increased to about twice the previous distance. As we exited the car the objects moved 90 degrees or laterally to our left in a westerly direction in unison about 1/4 mile, now positioned above the trees and the shores of the Turtle Flambeau Flowage (which we could not see) but knowing the area that is where we estimated their position. At the same time keeping the same positions above each other. After retrieving the camera my friend and I watched the objects for about 3 minutes, unfortunatly the camera I had was one of these disposables and was really disposable as nothing turned out, to fast of a shutter I'm sure. But when I started taking pictures with the flash the objects changed formation immediately and formed what resembled a perfect triangle on a horizontal plane with each light forming one corner of the triangle about 1/2 mile above the ground. We watched them for about another minute at which ti! me we de cided to proceed further down the road to try and find a better vantage point to view from. We moved about 1 mile down the road and came to a spot where the trees were a little further from the road, at no time did we loose sight of the objects. As we pulled to the side of the road the objects slowly started to rise at about 500 feet per minute (estimating) At this time I attempted to take another picture with out exiting the car. I put the camera out of the car window and snapped a picture, about 5 seconds later a Pickup truck pulled to the shoulder just a head of us in a spray of gravel. (This was the first car we had seen during this whole time)I pulled along side the other car the driver (about 27 years old) was alone in the truck and his first words to us were " What the hell am I looking at, I've been watching those things for about 10 minutes. Am I glad I saw your flash go off I knew you guys saw them as well. No airplane can fly like that in 90 degree corners. This was really wierding me out". At that time we got out of the car again and the lights began to rise more rapidly increasing speed as they got higher. And suddenly they were gone as if someone turned a light switch off, meaning they didn't rise and simply get out of sight. This whole time we heard no sounds at all, from the objects or nature sounds as well. My dog in the back of the car made no attempt to get out of the car like she usually does. We continued into Mercer at this time and as we entered the town we relized that the town was blacked out, no power at all. The time was about 01:00 when we reached my cabin and we had no power as well. Power was restored at about 01:15 on the 3rd out of curiousity I called the power company on the following Monday and they wouldn't tell me what had caused the outage. I am a business owner in the technology field and my friend is a Senior Support Rep for a major corporation we are both 42 years old, I served in the military in a nuclear unit and he in the air force.

Posted 2001-08-20

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