NUFORC Sighting 105166

Occurred: 2012-12-13 00:00 Local
Reported: 2013-12-08 21:08 Pacific
Duration: 15-20 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Markleville, IN, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Several pairs of lights witnessed during the late hours of 12/13/2012.

I've debated with myself for quite a while (as can be seen by the date of this report), as to whether or not to formally file a report.

On the evening of 12/13/2013, my girlfriend and I exited my house at roughly midnight; I got into my car, she got into her car (I needed to drive up to the local gas station to put air in my tire, which was extremely low). Before backing out of my driveway, I checked my rear-view and driver-side mirrors to make sure that no other vehicles were behind me. Upon looking in my driver-side mirror, I noticed two lights very close together at roughly 35 degrees and possibly 500-1000 feet in the air; this object appeared south of my home. I looked for a moment slightly confused as it was a mostly overcast evening. The longer I started, the longer my girlfriend started at me wondering what I was looking at. When I looked over at her, she kind of tossed her hands up wondering what I was doing, I pointed back and up.

After doing this, I got out of my car. She then exited her car and wondered what I was looking at. I pointed it out to her and she was also confused. She then pointed out another set of identical lights roughly 1000 feet to the right (towards the southwest). I then spotted a third set of lights roughly another 1000 feet further to the southwest. All of these lights appeared to be at the same altitude but was unable to make out anything that resembled a shape.

As we looked at these stationary lights, the first set of lights started tilting to the right as if if was going to start moving, it however stayed stationary. When we looked over at the other two sets of lights, they had done the same thing. I am not sure as to whether or not these were coordinated events, or circumstantial. At this point, we actually questioned what we were looking at. We kind of jokingly dismissed it as ufo's and got back into our cars and headed out to the gas station that is at the corner of state road 38 and 109 in Markleville, Indiana.

I continued looking to the south as I was driving to watch the lights that we had spotted. They were still there, and the further from my home that I drove, I spotted 2-3 more. When we got to the gas station, we watched for another few minutes. By this point, the objects had started moving slowly to the west.

When I got back home I looked again, and each set of lights was gone.

Having served in the Air Force and being familiar with several different types of aircraft, my initial thought was that we had seen a small fleet of helicopters preforming late night maneuvers. The more I thought about it though, the objects (after tilting to the right) did not appear to move. It is common for us to see commercial aircraft over our homes at night as we live in an area that is a commonly traveled flight path for airliners to land at the Indianapolis International Airport. It is also common, though less so, that we have military jets fly over our home. This however, generally only happens during air shows at the airfield located around McCordsville, Indiana and rarely outside of spring or late fall. Also, these objects were 100% silent. The only noises that we heard were from our running vehicles.

I captured no photographs of this event, and it wouldn't likely have been good photographs due to low light. I would however be more than willing to sketch what we witnessed.

Thank you for taking the time to read this rather lengthy report.

Posted 2013-12-12