1991-05-20 - Northfield, MN - Formation

7 UFOs flying in a train formation seen in Northfield MN, 1991

I have created a Flash animation of this experience: http://www.((URL deleted)) In 1991 I was a senior at St. Olaf college in Northfield,MN. The following was witnessed by me, and at least 4 of my friends. The event occured in April or perhaps May of 1991. I was dark but it hadn't been dark very long. I'd guess it was 9:00. A group of us were in my friends apartment (Lincoln Parkway apartments) when one of my friends called us out to the second story balcony of the apartment. "hey guys check this out.. are these UFO's or something?" We went out of the desk and there were several lights about 40-45 degrees above the horizon (from our perspective).. These lights were moving fairly slowly in our general direction.. as them moved closes they seemed to be following each other, one after the other.. I would call it a "string" of lights..there were 7 or maybe 8 of them. I'm almost certain that these lights were moving independantly of each other and were not part of a single, huge object. The lights were a deep, amber red. I'm fairly certain the red lights were on continually and were bright. In addition, each "craft" also had what I remember to be several strobes blinking in a repeating, irregular, odd pattern not like the once every 3 second strobes of an airplane. the repeating strobe pattern (of maybe seven individual blinks) that each craft had repeated I would guess every second or so. I got the impression that these lights were fairly close to us.. and the size of each was maybe the size of a small plane. (20 feet diameter each?) I didn't notice any sounds from these lights. I actually got the cordless phone and called my roomate (who was in my apartment in the next building) and told him to go out on the balcony and look at what we were seeing.. I asked him what he thought they were and he said "I don't know, a train??" which was obviously not the case because trains don't fly, and these things were definitely in the air. But the lights were "train like" with one following the other blinking their weird lights. The distance between these lights in this string was not far. They seems to be much closer together than what I would think to be a safe distance. A couple years later I noticed a formation of helicopters flying, one after the other, and I took note that the distance between the helicopters was much farther apart than the lights that we say. Actually, I do remember that the noise of a train going by on nearby track was audible at the time. this may have also been what caused my friend to give "train" as an explaination. If there were any sound of the craft, the train noise may have gotten in the way of us hearing anything). But had it been 6 Cesnas that close, I'm certain I would have heard the engines. Still watching the lights, I called the police on the phone I was holding. the woman who answered said "Oh, you know what those are? they're ultralight aircraft". This I doubted. I had seen ultralight aircraft in the area before. But never to my knowledge at night, and never flying in formation. The crazy blinking pattern of these lights was unlike anything I had seen on any airplane before. Seeing one of these things would have been curious, but It's possible that I may have just dismissed it as a plane that had odd lights but I doubt it. These lights were weird, and there were 6 or seven of them! Interestingly, the police-woman I was talking to told me that in a neary by town (Fairbault) there had been a newspaper story of some UFO sightings a week or so previous to the night I was talking to her. (more about this later). The lights continued closer and closer to us and seemed to get lower. Slowly, the lights drifted past us to our left and from our perspective they disappeared along the tree line. After the initial string of lights disappeard to our left, 3-5 minutes past and then we looked up and saw another single craft appear in the some location in the sky that the initial group appeared. It moves slowly along, following the path that the other lights took. I seem to remember this one being slightly different. I believe it was smaller, but perhaps it wasn't. It had similar red lights and blinking strobes. The entire sighting lasted about 8 minutes. I later regretted not getting out of the building and going out in the field past the trees to see if I could continue to see the lights, but to be honest, I was scared. The next day I called the Fairbault newspaper and asked about the article that had been printed. The reporter verified that he had in fact written an article that discussed a couple of sightings in that area. I believe he mentioned that someone had seen a strange light shining a beam down or something like that. He also mentioned that a local farmer farmer had apparantly also had a sighting around the same time as us. This farmer had had sightings in years past and even had experienced cattle mutilations. The reported took my name and we talked about him possibly writing a new story talking about our sightings, but I didn't pursue it and neither did he so nothing ever happened. I also called the FAA and not surprisingly they weren't helpful. The 1997 "Phoenix Lights" reminded me somewhat of what we saw, how the lights appeared in a row. But the lights in that video seemed white, not red, and didn't appear to be moving. The lights we saw were much closer to each other (and to us) than the lights in the Phoenix videos that were widely shown. I know this report lacks certain important information (exact time, date) but I've done the best I can. What I do know is that these were definitely, without question, intelligently controlled craft, not balls of light way off in the distance. These lights were close and sharp and had it been daylight, I'm certain I could describe the shape of these craft, but it was just dark enough that we could only see the lights of the craft, not the shape of the crafts they were attached to. If these craft were man made, they were unlike anything any of the five of us ever recall seeing before or since. This string of lights was moving roughly in an east to west path. ((name deleted))

((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD))