[mudman]

Not a UFO but...

My wife and I saw something that left a mark on us last year. I couldn't sleep, and took to wandering the back yard (I live in a ruralish area). It was one of those cool July nights where there were no mosquitos, a light dry breeze kept the dew light on the grass. Beautiful clear sky.

I love being outside at night, hearing coyotes in the distance and mice foraging in the dry grass really calms me. After wandering around, chasing raccoons from the garden, spooking deer in the meadow, I found myself staring at the western sky. A twinkling star had caught my eye and I just kept staring. I swear I could see it moving, almost vibrating by my perspective. A nearby arrangement of three stars now seemed have moved, their orientation to each other and the twinkling star.

I am not easily spooked or aroused, just isn't my nature. But there was something about what I was viewing that gave me a truly uneasy feeling, it was a very strong gut feeling or freaky intuition but I had no idea why. It must be my mind, or my eyes playing tricks on me, maybe I'm too tired.

To prove the insignificance of these lights I figured invalidating my observations of movement would be a good start. I walked back up to the house and found something stable to brace my head against so I could get a steady view. You guys know what I mean, when you've been trying to look at something far away in detail and it is hard to steady your vision, especially in low light. So with my chin on the hood of an F250 pickup in the driveway I again looked at my lights. Ok, still moving. I tried repositioning to use the windshield and the hood to stabilize my head. Yup, I'm crazy cuz this light is still vibrating, and now I see a quick blip of light go between the vibrating light and the three lights off to the side. WTF, now there are two lights and they're not where they were just a second ago, and even though I'm staring at this the whole time I didn't see them move. I'm really feeling something weird now, I'm not freaking out but either I'm seeing something special or I'm imagining things.

My wife wasn't happy about being woken up, but she said afterward that she knew it was something important when I came to her. If it was me seeing things that weren't there then she could tell me, and if it was something else then I thought she should see, if for nothing else another perspective. I showed her the lights, and she acknowledged 'yeah, I guess so' that there was movement. We talked about it maybe being a satellite, its reflection creating both the twinkling and movement effect. But the range of movement ruled out anything smaller than a mile in width at normal satellite distances.

While we were both silent, just looking at the lights, POW.

We both agree we saw a very bright flash, not in the sky but around us. And it wasn't a blinding flash like a camera, our eyes didn't seem to need to adjust. It didn't seem to have a source directionally or intensity wise. The split second of light seemed to give us super vision, extreme peripheral vision too. My wife and I both had the same experience and felt the flash had come from just a few feet away on our left side. We instantly looked at each other and I grabbed her and walked her toward the house. I felt very, very threatened. She stopped me and asked 'what was that', though she knew I didn't know, and now she was feeling the weirdness too. There was also a strange smell in the air, faint but like the scent of packaging materials or plastic that you only get for a second when you open something new. One of those smells that you can't quite put your finger on or describe. Not burning or electrical, more fresh and plasticky. And it was gone just a second later. My son's minibike was in that general direction (to our left, about 25' away), my garage too. I sniffed around but smelled nothing. She shared my fear, and urged me to come inside with her.

We chatted for a second once inside but neither of us really wanted to talk about it. The feelings we both had that night were nearly as weird as the lights and flash. Pardon the poor writing but it is difficult to express my experience.

I'm in the 'possible but improbable' and 'where's the proof?' camp when it comes to this stuff. I really can't fit any explanation to my experience.