SIGHTING: APPLETON, WISCONSIN (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My son was ill with croup. we had gone to the er at midnight and returned home at 1:30am. at 5:31am he woke up coughing with croup again. we went outside in the cool air as his dr instructed us. we were outside for 5-10 min. it was just before daybreak and still pitch black out. our porch light was on and shining on us. we were looking at the sky at the big dipper and trying to find satellite's or planes as i tried to calm my son's cough. we spotted 5 lights at the tail of the dipper in the north. the lights were in a perfect v and appeared like stars. they were slowly traveling east to west much like a plane would. all the lights appeared the same. i pointed them out to my son, he saw them and shouted out and also pointed at them. immediately they stopped and slowly rotated until the v was pointed at our direction. it then came directly overhead at 10 times the rate of speed of its original path. it stopped directly overhead and slowly rotated back towards its original path and slowly returned and continued on its path until out of sight. the entire time it was completely silent. i've watched the space station, planes, satellite's, helicopters go overhead on other occasions but have never seen anything move in these ways defying general flight norms and in such silence. it moved as though it was gliding like a hawk circles its prey. based on the lights as they appeared on the horizon compared to overhead it was quite high in the air and substantial in size, much larger than an airliner. it was a solid mass as it passed stars disappeared behind it. we returned to bed. the only other strange thing was that when we went back in the house the lights would not turn on or off, if they were on they stayed on and off they stayed off. my wife got up at this time and also did not understand why the lights would not turn on or off. when we got up at 7:30 am that morning all lights worked normally. this has been bothering us all day and we did some googling and found this site. we have never witnessed or experienced anything like this before."