Form
97-AR
Date: Saturday, 08 April 2006
Animal Reaction Feature:
The witness was up at 3 AM and saw 6-10 small white lights blinking randomly in trees up to 150 feet tall. She noted that the neighbor’s dog started barking excitedly. She also noted that the lights would go out when the dog barked and would reappear when the dog was quiet. This apparently went on for 10 minutes. The witness went back to sleep, even though the lights were still visible and the dog was still excitedly barking periodically. [Because the dog was not observed, it is unknown if the dog’s attention was toward the swarm of lights or was in another direction.—jw]
The Sighting (IFO):
The witness thought that she was 150 feet from the lights, which she estimated as the size of a quarter at one point and as the size of a golf ball at another. She saw the lights from the ground (landed) to high in the trees. The witness considered lightening bugs as an explanation, but considered these too large and too white (not the normal green-yellow light that the witness associated with fireflies or lightening bugs).
After making a report to MUFONGA, the witness contacted them again the next day stating she had verified that what she observed was a swarm of fireflies, but they were seemingly bigger and brighter than normal.
Tom Sheets, SD, MUFONGA, noted that another similar report came in during this time from a different area but also reporting a bright swarm congregating in hardwood trees.
Source:
MUFON on-line database, CMS files, Tom Sheets, SD, MUFONGA.