2000-08-10 - Indian Lake, NY - Formation

Unmoving horizontal formation of about 8 very bright lights in the West from Indian Lake low to the horizon

I was camping for the week with my family and my friends family on Island campsite #17 on Camp Island on Indain Lake, which is a State campround. We were sitting around the fire after dinner. It had been dark for about an hour. My friend called my attention to some lights in the West that he had been watching for perhaps 20 seconds. I turned around and saw perhaps 8 bright lights just above the horizon to the West. They looked like aircraft landing lights on a plane within 5 miles as they were lined up horizontally, but they jsut hung there and I had never heard of an airplane with that many landing lights and they went out after perhaps 10 seconds which is also not typical of landing lights. My friend said that he had watched it for about 20 seconds before he thought to tell me and that the lights had been bright as "welding arc" and had maintained the same formation. We also noticed that there were three columns of diffuse light coming from ground level and pointing straight up, also in the West. Other members of our party witnessed these and thought they looked like Northern Lights except they did not waver at all and seemed to be more like beams coming from the ground like weal search lights. These remained for maybe 10 minutes. Perhaps a minute or two after the formation disappeared, it reappeared in about the same place although in a more red to yellow color and not so much in line. They again stayed put. This lasted maybe 20 seconds before going out. We watched closely after that and soon saw very tiny reddish dots, again in the West, that were zipping about in what seemed to be a random pattern. My guess is about 10 of these. We watched for quite a while and didn't see anything after that. This incident really spooked my wife as she had, without any provocation (such as UFO stories, sightings, or anything at all related) reported to me early Wednesday morning that she had a "dream" that seemed incredibly real that at about 5AM she heard a low pulsing sound above the tent and subsequent to that felt some kind of "beam" pass through her body. It scared her to death and she tried to call out to me but could not move or make a noise. She reported that all she remembers after that is waking and remembering the experience and she was VERY frightened. Nobody else saw or heard anything and we all joked with her about it and asked if the spacemen "did anything sexual to her" (ala the movie "Independence Day"). In retrospect the coincidence gave us pause. Fueling at the boat dock Thursday morning, my friend asked the kid pumping gas if anyone saw anything strange in the sky the prior night. He siad that he was in the Village of Indian Lake and saw the same formation to the West over the golf course. On Sunday, I mentioned the incident to my uncle who lives in Indian Lake and he said that the same thing was seen in the West by his friends that lived on the lake. He's going to talk with them and get more detail to send to me. I don't have any idea what the lights were, but Rome Air Force base does manuevers in the area of the Lake and I know we have a big year for solar activity. I be pleased to hear from others who witnessed this incident. P.S. This report form presupposes sighting of an "object". We only saw lights.