SIGHTING: TRINIDAD, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)
Witness Testimony
"My wife and i were sitting at abalone point, in patrick’s point state park in ca, at around 11 pm, looking out over the ocean, enjoying the evening. we were talking about the sea lions barking, and the two boat lights we could see off to our right (north). these lights were fairly bright, steady, and basically stationary. as we talked, i looked for more boats off to the left (south), when i noticed a much smaller reddish light on the horizon line. the light seemed to appear and then disappear, but having seen boats on the ocean my whole life, i at first attributed this to the moving swell of the ocean obscuring the far away light, as it rose and dipped while floating on the surface, as lights from boats often do, especially when seen from a long distance. this light was very small, and was right on the horizon line. i pointed it out to my wife, and said, “look, i can see another boat way way out there. do you see it?” she replied that she did. just at that moment, the light surged to the right very quickly, a distance of what looked like a few inches, if i were to hold a ruler out at arm’s length and measure it. we both were like, “did that light just move, or am i tripping out.” at that moment, it again surged to the left about the same distance, stopped for asecond or two, then surged to the left again, about the same distance as before. we were very shocked by this. it was at this point i realized the light wasn’t appearing and disappearing behind ocean swells, but rather pulsating slowly on and off. i started to get excited, because i have seen and reported on objects with a pulsating red light before, and this looked very similar. after the second surge to the left, it remained stationary for a second, then rose up into the air with a forward (southerly) trajectory, seemed to split into two lights for a second, then merged back into a single pulsating light, all while rising into the sky and disappearing into the low cloud cover. when it took off, it had forward trajectory. when last seen, it was rising at a slightly steeper angle than 45 degrees. the trajectory and angle combined into a flight path that was an arc. we were both stunned by this sighting. we tried to debunk it with our knowledge of aircraft, and watercraft, and could not figure out what would or could move that quickly when it was that far out to sea. we live near a small airport, and a coast guard station. we are used to seeing all kinds of fishing vessels on the water. we are familiar with aircraft movement and associated lights. the coast guard helicopter routinely flies over our house (we are local to the area the sighting took place at). what we saw was not a boat, was not a plane or helicopter, was not a flare or firework, was not a drone. it moved laterally across the water way too fast, in a unfamiliar surging motion, then flew into the air from the water. nothing i know of, and i’m an avid sky watcher, does that. "
