SIGHTING: GIMLI (CANADA), MB

Witness Testimony

" Two bright red lights seen after dark, moving slowly across the beach, over the lake, and then rapidly diminishing into distance.On the last night of the Gimli Film Festival, in a crowd of hundreds, sitting on the beach of Lake Winnipeg after dark, watching the screening of The Goonies. It was warm, humid, very few clouds (stars and moon were easily visible). About half an hour into the feature I noticed above and to the right of my peripheral (the film screen--which is on the beach--faces west) I saw a fairly bright red light moving West to East in the sky. They were nearly as bright as a distant road flare, or about the brightness of a traffic light. I'm guessing they were no more than about 1 or 2 km away.I watched this red light as it moved in a more-or-less straight line at first moving slowly then about the speed of an airplane, towards the left somewhat behind the top of the screen. What strikes me odd is that there was no discernible sound as you'd expect from any airplane (granted the intermittent sound from the movie speakers may have masked it), nor were the lights blinking at all in any way (as you'd expect from any airplane). At first I thought it might be a drone with a light attached to it but a drone would not have continued travelling so far out over the lake.Within one minute from the moment that first light appeared I see a second identical light, following a similar path, they were perhaps 500 meters apart (or the length of two hands held up). So for a minute or two I watch both objects as they seem to either diminish or speed off into the distance across the lake, and at a higher altitude, possibly into distant cloud cover, but unsure since I recall still being able to make out pinpricks of light before they were completely gone.I estimate their average speed was 250 km/h; sighting lasted under 5 minutes, lights appeared to cross the lake which is about 25km in that direction.I considered taking a video on my phone for evidence but figured surely it must be something ordinary what with all these other people seeing it also.Then again I'm pretty sure if the lights were from an aircraft they would have stayed within view for a lot longer as I have previously seen planes fly across the lake at night; it takes more time for a light to travel out of sight, especially the further it gets. In other words a plane's lights appear to move faster when it is near, and slower towards the distance.... these lights were precisely the opposite--slow when near, faster in the distance. I can rationalize a great many lights or objects in the sky, but I don't have a good-enough explanation for these two. If they were some kind of lit-up balloons they would have stayed visible for a lot longer, and with little to no wind would not even have traveled from the trees, across the beach and over the water in so little time. If they were meteors/fireballs/etc., they'd have fallen in a downward--not upward-direction. If they were planes there'd have been a blinking green light, unless it was taking off or landing then a br! ighter white light. Maybe a military plane has just a steady red light, but then I'd have definitely heard the sound of a jet engine, especially if accelerating to vanish into the distance towards the other side of the lake. But let's suppose it was a plane with a solid red light just it was too high to have been heard... then how could the light have been so unmistakably bright over the beach? Bright enough to distract an entire audience from watching a movie? Not even the Northern Lights managed to do that until the movie was over. "