SIGHTING: DULUTH, MINNESOTA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"I only wrote this down 5 years after the event, so I hope I don't leave out too many details. I was playing a computer game at my friend's house and he was watching me when all of the sudden he got really excited and said he saw a shooting star. His house is on a hillside just above a flat area, so we had a good view of the sky and were just above eye level with the tree tops as we looked out his window. Anyway, I was too into the game and figured it would be gone by the time I looked so I didn't. I thought he was too excited for just a shooting star anyway. Then he kept seeing them and getting so excited that he finally wrenched me away from the screen to look. At first I was nothing, he said to wait, and then I saw a bright flash of light and I told him that it was definitely not a shooting star. The closest I can get to describing it is like the flash of light from an "artillery shell" firework, the ones that make the loudest bang and just emit a flash of light. Looking for a logical reason I told him that it was just the neighbors lighting off fireworks, even though I didn't see the faint light as it shoots up that I usually see due to the wick burning. I was standing right next to the window and thought it was strange that I couldn't hear the noise from it, it was easily close enough to hear through a window, and I started to mention this to my friend when I looked down and realized the window was wide open but there was no noise to be heard beyond the usual forest sounds. That is when a creepy feeling came over me and all sorts of explanations went through my head, a weather balloon seemed like it might be able to do this. But then, after several seemingly random flashes with several seconds between them, the light flashed once more and then dimmed but did not go out entirely. It stayed dim and began to fall fairly fast, then it got brighter again and stopped a little ways above the tree line, at which point less than ten smaller reddish light separated from it and they all disappeared. We wondered over it for a little while but then kind of dismissed it and went back to playing computer, we were only 17 and 16 years old.A few minutes later my friend stopped me again telling me to come look at the shooting stars. This time they actually did look like shooting stars, hundreds of then shooting around. My first thought was that it was a massive meteor shower but as I continued to watch I became convinced otherwise. First of all they were not appearing and disappearing like other shooting stars I had seen, they were constant lights, and secondly they were moving not only down and across the sky but also up, diagonally and every direction. They moved in fast-moving erratic paths, many changing directions in an instant. As I was trying to figure out what these lights were, my friend started telling me be could see actual objects moving around and reflecting the moonlight slightly. I have bad night vision but I could also see things moving when he pointed them out. We decided to go outside to get a better look at them, so we went and laid on the hill. My friend was seeing them much more clearly than me but then one of these crafts floated in front of the moon and there was no mistaking it this time. I didn't believe my eyes so I asked my friend what he was seeing in order to confirm what I was seeing and he told me he saw a triangular shaped black craft with smooth corners just as I was seeing. As I watched that thing silently glide overhead, I couldn't help but get a creepy feeling like someone was watching us. I had a hard time seeing them after that one was no longer between me and the moon, but I could still see the lights and we continued to watch them. Then, slowly, clouds rolled in and the lights began to disappear behind then. About !5 minutes after they all had disappeared the clouds rolled away and the sky was clear in the moonlight as though nothing had ever happened. We were a bit unnerved by this but eventually went to sleep and woke up and fold his dad the next morning. Then his dad told us about some other strange things like electrical interruptions that had been happening at their house but they could be completely unrelated. I would like to think that this was part of an experiment by the Air Force but the motions of the crafts suggest a much higher technology was being used than is available to us. They were all changing directions quickly, even 90 degrees, and without a sound. The sheer amount of them together without a crash suggests a level of skill that would not be attainable with our current technology. I have been wracking my brain for years and cannot come up with an explanation that doesn't involve advanced technology. If anyone has a logical explanation please let me know and do not assume that I believe in aliens."