SIGHTING: LEGGETT, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"Unfortunately, I was very tired and not in great observing/remembering form when this incident occured.I was a passenger in a car with 2 other people headed north on Hwy 101 near Leggett, CA around 1:30am. I noticed some lights through the windshield that somehow didn't look quite like airplanes usually do- it seemed to have more red/gold to it. The area we were driving through is forested with redwoods, has very rugged hills/mtns, and the road was very winding so it was difficult to keep the lights in view. There looked to be multiple colors (red, gold, whitish, and greenish or bluish) moving back and forth (or even rotating around) an object. In this regard, it was not that different from the way nav lights on a plane can sometimes look, but at this point it had become clear that it did not seem to have moved at all since I first saw it. As stated above, the area is mountainous, so I considered that it was someone's house atop a hill. It's a very rural area and the moon (just a sliver) had gone down a couple hours earlier (or behind the mtns anyway) so it was too dark for me to actually see the boundary between hill and sky. To me, it looked a bit too high to be the top of a hill, and then there was the fact that the lights were multi-colored and rotating (or whatever they were doing). However as it had been about 3min since I first observed the lights and they still hadn't seemed to move or change position/shape at all, I decided it must be someone's house on top of a very tall hill, having some sort of Halloween disco party (hence the lights). I then lost sight of the lights and figured that was the end of that, but to my surprise, about ten minutes later, they appeared again. As we had covered some distance (traveling at about 65mph), it obviously could not have been a house on a hill, so I had the driver of the car stop so we could try to get a better look. The lights appeared to be at the same elevation as before, but perhaps were just a bit smaller, as if more distant. I couldn't really make out any other details about the lights. I tried to take a picture but my camera could not focus on distant lights in the dark. The lights then disappeared for a moment (behind tree or hill), thus confirming it wasn't a house, and then reappeared. A plane passed by to the west (the other lights being towards the north) and unlike the lights I was observing, it was very obviously a plane. The driver of the car felt that the "strange" lights I was seeing were just lights on another plane and the other passenger did not see the "strange" lights (or the plane). As it was cold and late, I gave up observing and got back in the car. As we were pulling back onto the highway, I noticed the lights seemed to be slightly more distant. I do think it's possible (even probable) that it was just a plane, that what I had seen 10min before was a completely different plane, and they just both happened to look strange to me and seemed to move very slowly (or perhaps not move at all)- perhaps becuz it was a cold and very clear night? Almost as soon as we started driving again, I lost sight of the lights for good. "