1997-04-07 - Austin, TX - Triangle

I was driving northbound on I-35, and was around 5 miles south of Austin when I noticed an intensely bright white light far ahead on the horizon line, directly in front of me. It was the brightest and most white light I’d ever seen (and still have ever seen to this day, some 12 years later).

After a few minutes I realized it was still there, directly in front of me, maybe 20 miles ahead. It was very low on the horizon and now I started to wonder what it might be. I discarded aircraft because there are no headlights this bright, and even if they were, they’d have to be flying directly southbound over I-35, which I doubt they’d do. I thought it might be a commercial spotlight that somehow had been pushed downward, aiming straight at me, but I couldn’t see any beam projecting from the source.

I was traveling around 70mph and getting closer to it by the minute. After about 10 minutes I realized that the light was not stationary. It was slowly moving westward, to my left. I was really mesmerized by this thing now, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it could be.

When it got much closer, I pulled the car over, turned off the engine and got out. The craft was triangular in shape, and maybe the width of two to three 737 planes wing-to-wing. What first struck me was that it was completely silent. If the light hadn’t attracted my attention, you never would have known it was there. It was slowly moving, almost drifting, south-westerly, maybe 500 feet off the ground.

The other thing that struck me is that now, from underneath, I could no longer see the white light, but instead saw 3 different colored lights, one on each top of the triangle. One was red, one was green and the other yellow, all solid.

As I stood in awe, a patrol car pulled off the road onto the shoulder coming southbound. The officer got out and stood looking up at the craft, just as I was doing. I jumped back into the car and drove right thru the grass, crossing the median and onto the southbound side. While this was completely against the law, the officer and I didn’t even discuss it. We just stood there staring at the craft.

Now, as it was moving away from us, we could no longer see the 3 colored lights on the tips of the triangle. All you could see from the back was a much larger, round red light in the center of the craft that was slowly pulsating. I couldn’t make out how tall the craft was, just the approximate width. The slowly pulsating red light was almost hypnotic, but our attention was broken by the arrival of a 2nd patrol car, this one the State Police. He too got out and watched the craft moving away. I asked them if they’d already checked with Austin-Bergstrom airport, and they had, reporting now commercial traffic anywhere near here or anything like what we were seeing.

After a few more minutes of the two officers discussing their confusion and fascination, I jumped in my car and headed back down I-35 from where I’d just come. I chased the craft for a few more minutes, driving about 70mph again, as it was now getting further and further off to my right (westerly). I finally pulled off the highway and tried going down a side road to head more westerly, but by then it had disappeared from sight.

I didn’t see anything about it in the papers, despite looking thru the Austin American Statesman for days afterwards. I wish I’d gotten the names of the officers who witnessed this with me, but I didn’t. I was too taken by what I was seeing in the sky.


((NUFORC Note: Source of report indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))