2008-08-02 - Oregon City, OR - Other

At 1:30am a very large craft approaches Portland, OR airport from the south and stops near Oregon City.

On Saturday, 2nd August 2008, my wife and I drove from home in Idaho to Oregon City to visit with my sister and brother-in-law. My sister has a trailer for camping and when we go to visit, the trailer parked beside the house, becomes our bedroom.

We went to bed and after a while I began having some sinus problems and got up to work on the problem. I decided it was time for some fresh air and stepped outside and was soon joined by my wife checking to see if I was ok. From the front door of the trailer we could see some stars but decided to move to the west end of the trailer where the view was better.

Clear starry night, some light pollution since we were in a city, but because it was 1:30am all was quiet and the stars were plentiful. We saw an airplane off in the distance traveling northwest with the navigational strobe lights flashing and it soon ranged out of sight.

Then we saw another airplane approaching from the south with headlights on as planes do for night landings, and the Portland airport was about 16 miles due north. At first I had a feeling that the airplane was not quite "right" but did not think too much about it. As we watched it approach closer to us from the south, I thought "those landing lights are really bright." Indeed, single lights could not be seen but the whole front of the plane facing us was lit up with very intense beams. As the plane moved through the sky it was eclipsing stars--as it came between us and a star the star of course would vanish, it then reappeared as the plane moved on.

Then it happened. The very bright lights of the plane, in two second steps, began fading. Fade, fade, fade...step at a time until no lights were on. All this while, and this was most interesting, the plane slowed to a stop. When we first saw it the plane was at about a 15º angle above level and now it was nearly 60º above level and very close. I estimated it was a thick tapezoid hovering less than 4 miles away over the Willamette River. Even though the bright lights were out, a faded outline could be seen for more than a minute. Once the headlights were completely out, we saw that there were no navigation lights flashing. The plane had mostly vanished from the sky, at least no bright lights to say it was there. Also, no stars were being eclipsed in any direction from where it stopped and turned off the lights. About a minute after the lights were completely out, there was a quick small flash, smaller than the outline area of the plane, and then it actually vanished. Actually vanished because the starlight it blocked now shown through and no star eclipses were in any direction from that point. If my guess on distance is accurate, then the craft would have been at least 200 feet across.

Plane? I don't think so.