UNEXPLAINED: My Strange Light Sighting

In September 1990, I saw something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It happened on the shore of a small, inland lake (3/4 of a mile long) on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada. It was about 9pm, fully dark at that time of year, and I was looking for a little dog that we were taking care of for a neighbour. The sky was clear, the stars were bright and the air was perfectly still and silent. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and no insect sounds since it was fall.

As I walked to the edge of the lake, looking for the dog, I noticed a large, strange light that looked to be about 500 feet off the ground to one side of the lake at the far end. The light was a bright, white beam – something like a helicopter search light shining down at about a 20º angle to the right. I could see the faint glow of the beam as it extended to the ground through the air, rotating slowly clockwise towards me. As the light pointed towards me I could see the glare shining off the water until the rotation continued on past. At this stage there were still no hairs rising on my neck, just puzzlement in my mind. “How could such a bright light be shining when there was no sound of an engine, even though the reflection off the water showed it to be close?” Like I said, the night was perfectly silent.

Strange Light, No Sound

The beam continued to shine down and rotate until it was about 180º from where I first saw it, still shining down at an angle with a slightly visible beam. It had been about a minute since I first saw the light. The puzzling part at this stage was the complete lack of any sound. Then something especially strange happened. 

Shocking Speed & Agility

The beam started to move horizontally to my right. Not rotating now, but actually travelling horizontally. Slowly at first, then picking up speed exponentially. What the light did next took no more than 2 seconds to happen, but that was enough to make things really strange.

The exponential speed increase built up very quickly. It started to travel faster and faster horizontally across about half the horizon to the right of where it had been, then turned vertical instantly, at high speed, and continued to pick up astonishing speed as it rose to the stars. I continued to see the light until it got about as small as a star, then it was gone. From my vantage point I could see most of the full sweep of the horizon because the trees were back a ways from the water’s edge.

Four Strange Things

There are four reasons all this defies the laws of physics (as my neck hairs affirmed):

1. It was completely silent: A big beam of light in the sky, rotating slowly with the beam angled towards the ground, but no sound whatsoever.
2. Unbelievable acceleration: When horizontal and vertical distances travelled were combined, it roughly travelled the width of the entire horizon in no more than two seconds.
3. Right-angle turn at speed: The sharp, right-angle turn during mid acceleration was especially strange. Not a curved turn, and no slowing down to make the turn. Just boom, a 90º turn at full and increasing speed, then full up vertical. The G forces would have torn anything we know apart.
4. Others saw things: Later that week, when our local newspaper came out, it had a story of other people reporting strange lights that same night, and one report of strange disturbances at the bottom of a sand pit about 15 miles from my house. 

At the time I’d never heard of anyone seeing anything like this, but since then I have. A big light in the sky at night, no sound, rapid travel and impossibly fast turns. Think of how long it takes a jet to traverse the sky at 600 miles an hour. This light covered roughly the same distance but in a matter of seconds.

Have you ever seen anything like this? Let me know at [email protected]. I’d like to hear.