1992-09-25 - Golden Valley, MN - Flash

A flashing bright, white light hovered over my neighborhood for over 2 hours.

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 when I saw a bright, white flash apparently emanating from a large 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 think I remarked out loud, "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. 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 appeared to come from inside the same cloud as before, although it might have been below it and in front of it, creating its own haze. Since I had sighted it from 2 different angles, I was able to mentally triangulate its location, and later used a city map left over from a Street Light Project to do the same with a ruler. This thing was located approximately over a neighbor's house or front yard across the street, not much higher than the tops of the trees - perhaps 1 1/2 to 2 times the height of the local elm trees. 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 from the south, going around in a circle. Whenever the searchlight beam aligned with the object, there would be a flash apparently in the cloud. The searchlight beam was far too high to hit the object and cause a reflection. The closest advertising searchlights (used by car dealers, etc.) would have been about a mile away since the area is entirely residential up to that point. At that distance, a searchlight beam would have been hundreds of feet high by the time it intersected my neighborhood. 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 when I came out at perhaps 11:00pm, the clouds had drifted away. But the flashing continued with each sweep of the searchlight!! The flash seemed to be enveloped in a haze when it occurred, but there was no visible haze in the air prior to the flash. There was also no "object" visible. 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. I mentioned it to a friend in our UFO group (an engineering type), and he had never heard of anything like it either. Since that episode, I've purchased a videocamera and a 500,000 candlepower, hand-held, portable searchlight of my own! Maybe next time (if there IS a next time), I'll tape it!