SIGHTING: VAN METER, IOWA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"This report is submitted by Chief Investigator, Beverly Trout. The witnesses are a couple who attended Trout's UFO adult education class in January, 2012. On September 6, 2011, at about 9:45 p.m., from their car as they drove along their small hometown street in Van Meter, a male witness and his wife saw a reddish-orange circular light pass from south to north over the town. They were curious, so they drove north out of town and parked in the driveway of the Iowa Veterans Cemetery a mile north of town. Looking to their SW and W and NW, they watched as several more (9 in addition to the one they'd seen while still in town) moved through an approximately 3 land miles transit.Total duration is estimated at 10-15 minutes. They estimate it probably took a couple minutes to drive a bit over one mile to their vantage point north of town, from where they watched an additional 9 lights/objects as they moved into view, going from south to north. They watched to their left (looking south) as the objects emerged over the trees south of the town and as the objects moved over the town from south to north, and over a gravel pit lake on the south side of I-80 directly opposite from where witnesses were parked, then on over I-80 to the north where they disappeared over the elevated terrain - an estimated 3 miles straight-line trajectory transit.The far side bank of the gravel pit lake west of the witnesses is estimated at 200 yards (600 feet) land distance from where they were parked. Apparent size of the objects was a dime (1.8 degrees), and they were seeing the objects at about 70 degrees elevation over the lake. There was no sound from any of the objects, and witnesses were unable to see any structure. They could only see the unwavering reddish-orange lights of each object.One light/object would come into view, move across the sky, then move beyond the witnesses view to the north, at which point, another one would move across the sky and do the same thing, until 8 of the 9 had done so - the last one did the same until it got to their right at about 60 degrees & then, instead of continuing to move BEYOND witnesses line of sight, when it got to their 2 o'clock position, it simply disappeared as they watched it.Both witnesses compare the speed of the objects to a light plane's speed, in other words, not as fast as a commercial jetliner. "