SIGHTING: D'HANIS, TX
Witness Testimony
"5 miles South of D’Hanis, Texas on Farm to Market Road (FM) 2200 December 29, 1999 approx. 5 AM I stepped out of the back door and stood facing east. I noticed a very bright light in the sky in front of me. It was approximately 30° above the horizon. (Although, looking in that direction there are hills, so it was probably more in the range of 35-40° above the true horizon). The light was moving fairly quickly from left to right across my field of vision. My first thougtht was it was an airplane with its landing lights on. It was an extremely brilliant light, very white or blue-white. Then it appeared to stop, and I thought perhaps it had been turning slightly towards me and now was facing me so the apparent motion was stopped, although there was only one light rather than the two one normally sees from an approaching plane. But it continued to stay motionless and the light did not appear to grow any closer or brighter. I then thought perhaps it was a helicopter with a bright light on it. But I continued to watch it for several minutes and it made no movement. I also heard no sound (There were no sounds out there in the countryside other than the occasional low “moo” from a nearby cattle pen). After watching for several minutes, I went into the house and called the others to come outside to look at the light. We all trooped out the back door and I pointed out the still stationary light. Witness 2 asked what is was. I said I didn’t know and explained its movements so far. Witness 3 asked if it could be a planet or a star. I said it was certainly much larger and brighter than any star or planet I’d ever seen, that it looks bright like nearby aircraft landing lights, and it also moved from left to right and then stopped. Then I noticed it seemed to move slightly to right, and said so. Witness 2’s boys (Witness 4 and Witness 5) agreed. We all kept watching it while speculating on what it might be. It appeared to move both left and right and up and down occasionally, but with no pattern I discerned. These were precise horizontal and vertical movements We all noticed the same movement. Witness 3 wondered if we were perhaps seeing the movement as some sort of optical illusion. But we were all seeing the same movements. After Witness 3’s speculation, when I noticed movement, I did not call it out, but waited to see if someone else would notice and call out the movement I saw. Both Witness 2 and both boys at least once each called out movements (that I saw but did not state until after they said something). So at all times we were seeing the same movement. I asked the boys what they saw (as they good eyes - no glasses, and we had no binoculars). Witness 4 said he saw a darker area around the light. Witness 5 said to him the dark area looked kind of like a doughnut. I thought perhaps there was a smaller light above the light and asked the boys if they could tell if there was more than one or what it looked like to them. Witness 5 said it looked like there was a light on top going up and down. Witness 4 agreed that it looked like that to him. I thought perhaps I could see that movement, but I couldn’t tell for sure. We continued to watch and talk about the light, until we needed to leave for our hunting trip, which was approximately 5:30 am. Total time viewing the object from first sighting, until we left was at least 20 minutes. The weather was clear and dry, temperature approx. high 30’s It wasn’t possible to tell how far away or how high the object was, although I would venture a guess of a mile or two distant. In size it appeared to be something about the size of a pea held a arms length. At one point while we were watching, I used lights from two houses or farms as reference points. The “light” appeared to be equidistant (left and right) from the ground lights , making it the top point in a triangle. When we went to leave I looked at this again and the light was farther to the right (south), but still at the same apparent height. Even disregarding the movements of the light, I’m certain we weren’t seeing a planet. I later looked up the planet positions for that location, date and time, and found that Venus was the only planet that could have been visible in that general direction. However Venus was only approximately 5 degrees above the horizon at 5 AM, so I don’t think we could see it at all, because it wouldn’t have risen above the hills yet. Venus would not reach the correct height until around 8 AM. There were (5) witnesses altogether: Three adult males in their forties, all business executives from Houston, and the two sons (ages 14 and 12) of one of the men. None of us have had any previous experience with UFO’s. D'Hanis, Texas (Medina County) Location: 29:19:49N 99:16:46W Elevation: 886 feet"
