1992-09-15 - Golden Valley, MN - Flash

A strobe light flashed for 2 1/2 hours over a neighbor's house.

It was in late September, 1992. The evening was warm and balmy, and large white clouds drifted by at low altitude. I was driving back home from the local convenience store around 9:30pm, and had just pulled onto my street in Golden Valley, when I saw a flash in a cloud. It was roughly directly ahead of me, and at some unknown altitude. I thought at first that it was an airliner with brighter strobe lights (the FAA is always testing new anti-collision devices). I remarked out loud to myself, "He's too low!." He was not only low, I felt, but also off course! That was definitely not the approach to the Mpls/St.Paul airport that I'd seen any planes take.

I pulled into the garage, stowed my groceries, and decided to wander out to the deck since it was so nice outside. I had been outside only a few seconds when I saw another flash. It looked like the same one I'd seen before, but now it was southeast of me instead of almost straight south. It came from the same cloud I'd seen earlier! (It was a very large, white cloud, and unmistakable). I watched it for quite a while and noticed that it flashed about every 30 seconds. Finally, I was able to see - very dimly - a searchlight beam originating in the south, going around in a circle, and striking something with each pass. When the beam made contact, something flashed in the cloud. I had NEVER seen anything like this before! Why I didn't try to photograph it or turn my binoculars on it, I'll never know. I simply stood there and thought, "Isn't that interesting...." - knowing full well that it was very interesting, and unexplainable. Finally, I went into the house and watched the 10 o'clock news til about 10:30. When I came out again, the flashing was still continuing! I went in again, and came out at perhaps 11:00pm. The clouds had now drifted away, but the flashing continued with each sweep of the searchlight! Even though the clouds were gone, when it flashed, there seemed to be a variable haze around the flash. This went on until midnight when the searchlight quit. So it was hovering (?) near my house for at least 2 1/2 hours - possibly longer. It was late and 3 of my neighbors had young children at that time, so I didn't feel comfortable calling them at 10:00 or 11:00pm or later, to say, "Come out and look at this strobe light which flashes every 30 seconds...". I mentioned it to a friend in our UFO group (an engineering type), and he had never heard of anything like it either. I was able to triangulate its location using a city map left over from the Street Light Project in our neighborhood, since I had 2 sightings of the object from 2 different angles. This thing was located approximately over the street or over a neighbor's house in front of my house! Frankly, I was flabbergasted - even though the triangulation was simple, and could really have been done in my head if I'd been thinking. Since that episode, I've purchased a videocamera and a 500,000 candlepower, hand-held, portable searchlight. Maybe next time (if there IS a next time), I won't be so timid and mush-brained! Next time, I will videotape it, put a searchlight on it, use the binoculars, and call a neighbor for corroboration.