1985-06-30 - Whitney, TX - Formation

9 Objects in formation over Lake Whitney

A group of friends and myself had gone to Lake Whitney in the state of Texas in the mid-nineteen eighties and finally settled into the camping area at the Southwest part of the lake at the West end of the lake side of the Dam.

We were at a location known as Soldier’s Bluff and my brother and myself had, around 01:30, left the group to sit at the edge of the cliffs and fish. While we both sat there on an igloo cooler, we stared at disbelief at the beauty and clarity of the stars that filled the sky.

While staring into the night sky, looking towards the East, I spotted a single light moving across the sky. As I watched the light, it turned into two lights, with one being slightly above the other at about a two o’clock position, similar to how a plane would appear if it was traveling across the sky and slowly turned towards you. The two lights became further and further apart, causing me to finally exclaim out loud that that was a HUGE plane because of the distance that they were from each other. (I assumed them to be wing lights on an aircraft).

As they grew even further apart at an undeterminable distance, seven more lights appeared one at a time from either within the first light or from behind it and swooped into formation behind the first light as it made its way back across the sky from either the direction it came or in the direction it turned, with the second light falling in behind them. These objects seemed to emit their own bluish, white light with no blinking lights or colored lights.

They traveled in a Westward direction, with the larger, round shaped first light leading the smaller, seven round lights that were closely followed by a large rectangular light.

My brother and I watched in amazement as the 9 objects slowly and silently made their way across the sky before and above us. We tried to rationalize the fact that 9 airplanes or helicopters in the night sky would make SOME noise, but we heard nothing. We finally decided that it must be a smaller plane pulling a lighted banner. As if to prove us wrong, the large rectangular object rose slightly above the line of the formation and shot across the top of the formation to the halfway point, where it stopped and slowly drifted down between the formation to stop below the formation where it hovered in place until the last of the seven smaller lights finally passed over it at which point it rose back up to continue to take up the rear of the formation.

We watched the formation glide silently across the sky until we could no longer distinguish the objects from the stars and turned to look at each other for a long moment, then back at the sky.

At that point we both arose from the cooler and clumsily gathered up our fishing gear and made our way back to the campsite to find several friends standing there looking at and searching the night sky.

I asked if they had seen the lights, and with astonished looks on their faces they muttered a meek "Yeah, What was that?"

We replied that we were not sure ourselves what they were and we all spent the rest of the early morning discussing the possibilities.

At sunrise, we all broke camp and left the camp area and returned home to Dallas, Texas. The following day I contacted the Dallas Times Herald (no longer in existence) and asked them how I could find out if there were 9 aircrafts in the area on that night, at which time I explained what we had seen. I was told that their paranormal investigator would contact me shortly. I never heard from that person and assumed they had discovered some military exercise that had taken place over the area that night and never re-contacted them or attempted to contact anyone else of authority concerning this sighting. I believe I filed an online report with MUFON a few years back, but aside from that, I have told no one but friends or acquaintances about the incident.


((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD))