SIGHTING: ARCATA, CA

Witness Testimony

"red, green, and white lights hovering, jumping, and zig-zagging above Arcata, CA 7/4/2011On July 4th, 2011 my fiancee and i were driving eastbound on Samoa Blvd. in Humboldt County from Eureka to Arcata in Northern California. We noticed a standing light above the town of Arcata. The lights were still when we first saw them, and then started to move together in unison, as though all on one object. My fiancee pulled over and we got out of the vehicle and grabbed the camera, which was almost dead because we had just taken pictures at the fireworks show.The object looked as though it was directly above the Arcata plaza and Humboldt crabs baseball field, where a live event just finished 30min prior. It was approximatly 1,000ft high and at times dipping as low as 700-800 ft. The object looked as though it was big, about the size of a small house. There were red, green and white lights and seemed to be in a somewhat triangular position. We were looking North when we got out of the vehicle. The object would make sudden and swift changes and would also hover during the 5 min period in which we watched this. We took pictures of it, one zoomed out so you can see where its located, and a couple zoomed in so you can see the colors and shape. We then tried to record it because of all the movements it was doing, and thats when our camera died.The sudden changes in direction while in flight were unexplainable. The object would quiver in the sky and almost dance, making "s" and "z" movements, moving faster than anything we have ever witnessed. It would jump up and down so quickly it was hard to focus your eyes on it, and then it would stop. It would then hover and slowly rotate 360*, sometimes while moving across the span of the entire city of Arcata. It started to move closer to us so we decided to get back in the vehicle, because we both got nervous and felt unsure about what we were seeing.As we drove North on Hwy101 we saw it above Arcata, and actually ended up passing it, the entire time us keeping a close eye on what it was doing. Suddenly the lights would just turn off, then flash on placing the object close to where it was but in a different position in the sky. It did that about 5-10 times then stopped and hovered. We pulled off the Hwy at this point scared and wanted to see if there was anything else it was going to do, we pulled into a gas station and as we did so, the lights/object started towards the South side of town making it hard to see from our location. We spotted it down on the horizon, slowly moving behind a house that was in the way. We got gas and as fast as we could do that, it was gone. We pulled out and continued to look for it for approx. 15 min. "