SIGHTING: WEST NIPISSING, ONTARIO (CANADA)

Witness Testimony

"I was visiting my common law wife's relatives who had a cottage on an island toward the southern shore of Lake Nipissing eight miles south of the northern shoreline of the lake directly across from the family's residence in the town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. The time was about 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. in the evening. The cottage was totally in shade from the light of the sun which would set in the West in about one hour. It was a perfectly clear day with no clouds in the sky. We were all inside sitting in the living room of the cottage. My wife was sitting on the sofa which backed up against the picture window on the North side of the cottage. I was sitting on a sofa opposite her. Her relatives joined us there. There were six of us, three on each sofa just chatting. There was still enough light from the outside that we were sitting in the darkened living room but had not yet put on any lights in the room. I was looking toward the eastern end of the cottage when the room suddenly began to light up with a warm yellow-pinkish light. My wife asked me what was causing the light because she knew it was coming from behind her through the picture window. I said: "I don't know." and then looked out the window. It was then that I saw the pulsing orb of light that was 200 to 300 feet above the opposite shoreline that was eight miles across the water from the cottage. It was well clear of the tree-line. The orb was huge. My guess was that it was about five or six city buses, end-to-end in diameter - I'm guessing around 200 to 300 feet or more in diameter. It so happened that there was a pair of kid's binoculars beside me which I picked up. The optics were made of plastic which provided a clear image but not one the clarity of high quality binoculars but at that distance much better than looking with the naked eye. I'm guessing the power of binoculars was about 5x to 10x. Using them brought the image of the orb much closer and easier to view. The orb was pulsating light in all directions from the centre outward, with an undefined outer edge that appeared as if the light was spiking all along the outer edge of orb. There was no dimensional sense concerning the orb, a bit like taking a quick look at the sun with your sun-glasses on. You have no sense that it is a three-dimensional globe. Instead it looks more like a flat pancake of light that is emanating light in 360 degrees away from the centre of the orb. But here's the really cool part. I had been watching this orb emanating light in all directions when it appeared to close and suddenly disappear. Let me describe what I mean. Imagine you have drawn a perfect circle and folded the right half over the top of the left-hand side of the circle. Now imagine your line of sight is directly divided by the north-south centre line of the circle when the right-hand side of the circle gradually starts to close in the direction of the lef-hand side of the circle. You can see the right-hand side of the circle diminishing in size until it reaches the mid-point of the fold so that you are now looking at only the semi-circle on the left-hand side. Where the right-hand side of the circle had been glowing yellow-pinkish light that was totally opaque (i.e. you couldn't see the blue sky behind it) was suddenly the blue sky as it always appeared without obstruction of any kind. The right-hand side continued to close over the left-hand half circle so that as it closed the light became like a crescent of a moon that was being eclipsed by the earth, with the crescent getting smaller until the right hand side of the circle had completely covered the left-hand semi-circle, at which point the emanating light was completely extinguished leaving the uninterrupted blue sky as it had been before the light had suddenly appeared. The time period for the "closing of the book" process took slightly longer than a second to complete. It was a gradual process, not like someone slamming an open book shut. The minute the orb of light was extinguished the cottage return to its original darkness. What I witnessed that day is something I have never seen before or since. The only thing that even comes close is like looking at the setting sun about a half-hour before sundown. Except the light was much brighter but not so bright as to wreck your eyesight. I think if I had been on the far shore I would not have been able to look at the light. It would have been too bright to stare at but not as bright as an arc-welder. "