SIGHTING: PENDER, NEBRASKA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My friend and I were driving back to Pender from West Point Nebraska on a weekend morning, as we approached within a few miles of Pender I noticed a large bright light to the east side of Highway 9. At first I really thought the light was just an aircraft landing gear light since it was so bright and so close to the ground, then I realized that there are no airports in the area and the light didn���t appear to moving in any direction. I watched the light for about 5 to 10 minutes before I said something to my friend who was driving, once he saw the light we agreed to stop on top of the next hill so we could get a better look and see if we could tell if it was an aircraft light. We stopped just north of the intersection of V road and Highway 9 with a feed lot just to our southeast by about a half mile and the light was still to our east at about 5 to 10 miles at first guess. As we sat there we both realized that we didn���t have any way of knowing what time it was since the owner of the truck toke the radio face plate out of the truck before my friend and I left West Point NE. The last time we saw a clock it was around 1:30 am and that was when we left West Point. As we sat there I had my friend shut the engine off so that we could listen for jet engine noise or the thud of helicopter rotors, but once he shut the engine off we didn���t here any noise coming from the direction of the light. We both grew up around aircraft, my father was in the air force in Sioux City and my friend grew up within 3 miles of the same air base so we both were familiar with the different sounds created by all sorts of aircraft and their lights. The longer we sat there the more we talked about it and realized that this was no aircraft of any type and that the light was closer then we first thought 5 miles max from where we were parked. We sat there for an unknown amount of time when suddenly the light went from very bright to almost unable to see it. It went down to a red light so dim it looked just another star in the sky, and after a few minutes it went back to its full bright white light again. Within a few minutes of the light becoming bright again we both saw a beam of light like a spot light pointing the ground, the beam which started at the light came down towards the ground in the south direction at about a 40 to 45 degree angle. The beam was white in color and not as bright as the light in the sky, and because of the hilly area we could not see the point of impact of the beam. After a minute or two we both heard a blood chilling animal screaming sound and then the beam stopped like someone just hit the off switch on a spot light. We were kind of frozen in the spot once we saw the beam and heard that sound, we both wanted to get out of there but at the same time we both were afraid that staring the truck and turning on the lights might draw attention to our location plus we still wanted to know what was going on over that area. We were unable to tell if the sound we heard came from the area of the beam but it was unlike any animal that either us have every heard in our life���s. Again after a few minutes after we saw the beam the light in the sky once again dimed down to a very small red light as bright as nearby stars, this time we both noticed headlights coming from the south on the highway about 2 miles from us. Once the car on the highway passed our position and continued north out of sight the light became bright again. In the time that we sat there on the side of the road we had a few cars pass by coming from both the north and south, each time once a car got within a few miles of our location the light in the sky would dim down and once the car was a few miles passed us the light would again become very bright as if it was trying to hide from those cars. We sat there for about an hour or two; only way we could tell time is by how many cigarettes that we smoked. As the time went by I noticed the trees that were only about 10 feet from our truck would light up and then get dark again, like on a night with a full moon and patchy clouds, but this was happening with the flow of traffic like the light in the sky to our east so I figured it was just the head lights causing it. Then my friend starting looking around and discovered a light to the south west of our location, just as bright and as low to the ground as the first one. He kept his eyes on that one and I kept a look out on the one to our east, this had to go on for another half hour or so not once did either of the lights appear to move at all just grow dim as cars came near and then brighten back up once those cars passed. I finally got the courage up to step out of the truck since I had a full bladder and really needed to go, as I was standing there I just happened to look up to see if there was a full moon and discovered the third light directly above our location. Now once I saw that I was back in the truck screaming at my friend to start the truck and floor it back to Pender, once I told him that there was third light over us he did start the truck and never toke his foot off the floor till we were back in the town of Pender. The drive to town only toke a few minutes at speeds hitting 90 mph but to the both of us it seemed like forever, I kept looking in the mirrors and out the rear window to make sure the lights were not chasing us but after a mile I couldn���t find any of them in the sky. I can say we were both truly scared out of minds about what we had seen and the fact that a third light was over our heads not making a sound for god knows how long! Now once we got it to Pender the bank clock was at about 4:30 so we figure we spent a few hours out there parked on the side of the highway looking at these lights, at highway speeds it really only takes 30 minutes to get from West Point to Pender but since we had no way of telling time neither of us can account if we lost time or not. Since then my friend and I haven���t really mentioned this incident to anybody but close friends and he and I rarely speak of it to each other."