2013-10-23 - Mitchell, SD - Unknown

Saw lights in the sky that would turn on and off and split.

Dear Mr. Davenport, I had a sighting three years ago but just learned of your reporting center on Coast to Coast.

On October 23, 2012, my husband and I were driving back home to Mitchell, South Dakota from Sioux Falls, South Dakota around 6:00 p.m. We noticed a strange illumination in the sky ahead of us which seemed to be several miles ahead of us. We watched it and it seemed to be traveling at the same speed as we were going and in the same direction. I kept my eyes on it while my husband drove. I watched it until we turned off the Interstate at Mitchell to go home. As we traveled into the city I lost sight of the light.

At approximately 8:00pm that evening, I went out to the barn that I leased to bring my horses in for feeding. The barn was about 2 1/2 miles south of Interstate 90 on Ohlman Street. When I arrived at the barn it was dark out. I went to the first pen where I had two horses to bring into the barn. I noticed a strange white light directly above one of the barn that was about 30 feet away from where I was standing. The light turned on like someone was flipping a light switch. I would say the light was about 50 feet above the building. It looked very strange and I became very scared and got the horses in as fast as I could. However, there was one more horse to round up in an adjacent pen that was another 40 feet away. I really didn't want to go out again but I feared for the animal. I got to his pen and he was calm and didn't seem to be affected by the light. As I was trying to halter him, I looked at the light and it split into two lights in a blink of an eye. Boy I really got scared. They then turned off like someone was flipping the light switch and then on again and another light split into two. I got the horse haltered and took off as fast I we could to the barn. I closed the door and shook so hard. I called my daughter to tell my husband to come as fast as he could. Time seemed to stand still.

Since we lived so close my husband didn't take very long to arrive. I rushed him into the barn and told him what I saw. We then opened the back door of the barn and stepped outside. Where I saw the lights there were about a dozen or so little twinkly lights in a pack and they started drifting off to the south east sky. It was really weird.

I then remember a year of so before this we were driving back to Mitchell from Sioux Falls on Interstate 90 about half way home close to the Highway 81 intersection and again in the south sky we noticed a pack of twinkly lights like the ones we saw at the barn that night. So this was the 2nd time I saw the twinkly lights drifting.

I started to feed the horses before it got dark. We since moved to Sioux Falls and I never did see anything again, which was just fine by me.