2000-10-07 - Toledo to Marion, OH - Light

We saw a very bright light that only lasted for a second at a time that always moved from right to left and was close to the ground.

We were driving south on SR 23 from Toledo to Marion, Ohio. We tried to catch it. It looked like lightning at first. But then we realized it was not. It was a bright light that flashed from left to right for just a second at a distance of about a football field. It flashed at a ten minute interval then a 2 minute then 10 then 2 again. It kept moving around. It was very low to the ground and was often slightly hidden by a horizontal cloud. We thought that the cloud might have been a trail like a jet would leave. There were no clouds in the sky anywhere. The moon and stars were very bright and it was only 35 degrees out. So there could not have been any lightning anyway. We got close to it only once where I got a good look at it without a cloud. It was an incredibly bright light and was very white. It was big. It was long and skinny like a shot of lightning going sideways. It lit up most of the sky but only for a second like lightning, but it was NOT lightning. It moved around and we chased it. I can't think of any other way to explain it because we never saw anything like it before. There was absolutely no sound, we rolled down our window to try to hear anything. It was very scary because we could not believe what we were seeing. We kept trying to figure out what it was. We wondered if anyone else saw it and what they thought. Though we were scared we kept following it so we could get an answer, but even when we got close we could not figure it out. We just looked at each other and said it had to be an alien. It was not a natural phenomena. We just went home puzzled.