NUFORC Sighting 22674

Occurred: 2002-03-14 19:00 Local
Reported: 2002-04-29 11:01 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 1

Location: Flagstaff (north of), AZ, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Emitted beams, Aircraft nearby

Light beam in twilight sky

On the evening of March 14, 2002, I was returning from a day at the Grand Canyon National Park and was driving south on Highway 89 heading back toward Flagstaff, Arizona. I was somewhere between Gray Mountain and the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, when I witnessed a very strange light to my right in the dusk sky that looked like some sort of flying aircraft, but I couldn't really see anything of the craft except an very bright light being emitted from its underside, down in a beam like pattern for perhaps 100 feet, although it is very difficult to judge distances in the sky. It was not completely dark yet, but the light was certainly bright enough to stand out much more than any faint stars in the distance. I would estimate the object to be a few thousand feet high, and to the south of the object a mountain peak in the distance gave some sense of depth and height perception. I was driving about 80 miles per hour and the area is quite flat as you head back to Flagstaff, and I studied the object for about 20 seconds, while trying to determine whether it was a plane or some sort of hovering helicopter. I thought perhaps the craft was heading back to the Grand Canyon Airport, but it didn't seem to be moving at all.

On the horizon, out where the Grand Canyon airport could be, maybe 60-80 miles away, I could see a blinking light that most definitely an airplane off in the distance. It occurred to me that as I looked at this craft, it looked surprisingly enough just like a "flying saucer" would if it were hovering and just emitting a large beam of light from its underside. The beam spread out from the bottom of the object in a solid ray pattern, and I realized that I should take a picture of it with my digital camera. As I began to slow down the car, which took about 20 seconds, there were some trees on the side of the highway that kept interrupting my view of the craft slightly. As I was pulling past the sparsely populated stand of trees I could see that the light was beginning to rise slightly in the sky and a cloudy material was beginning to surround it. In less that 10 seconds, the light rose probably several hundred feet, and as it did the cloudiness, or smoke, or whatever enveloped it. Before I even got my camara turned on, it just disappeared in the smoke, the light was gone, and I couldn't see anything else in the twilight, except still the blinking light of an airplane very far in the distance on the horizon. I sat there mesmerized for a couple of minutes, trying desperately to see something else, but could see nothing, and then I was trying to determine if the cloudiness around the ship was really clouds or not. There were a few clouds in the distance, but none at all in that area of the sky. While I watched, the foggy sort of cloudiness eventually dissepated, within about five minutes it was gone and the area where the craft had been was clear and open sky.

I was very dissapointed that I didn't get a picture of it, I'm not really sure what I saw, but it was definitely not any sort of flying object I'd ever seen. I told my fiancee Lorie about it that night, and she didn't really know what to think about it. I have been very hesitant to submit this report, and was actually waiting for a while to see if anyone else reported seeing the object on the same night. I felt that I should at least give an account of what I saw in case anyone else witnessed it. I have no explanation for how it vanished, and I admit that it sounds very skeptical that it disappeared before I could even get a picture of it, but as God is my witness, this is a true account of my experience on that night. I am a chiropractor in Ontario, Canada, and was actually on a trip to look at offices for sale because I will be relocating to the western United States this year. I had taken a day off to go to the Grand Canyon and was returning from my sightseeing day there when I witnessed this unidentified flying object. I will not forget what I saw and it was unlike anything I expect to witness again.

Posted 2002-05-14