Other over Clarkston, WA

The report, as filed

The day before, on Father's day, I was over at my dad's house and we were cooking outside. Above the house we spotted what looked like a VERY large bird hovering over his house. It appeared to be roughly 100 meters up, based on comparisons to surrounding trees, and if that estimate was accurate I would guess that this bird had to have had a wingspan equivalent to a small single engine plane. What was very odd was the way it flew, hovering, very small wing movements at the very tips, and when it did fly away it basically headed directly east and at a very high rate of speed. There were 4 witnesses total for that sighting. My dad mentioned he had seen something similar where he works, only when he spotted it previously it spiraled straight up until it was out of sight. Apparently there have been other sightings of this thing in the area as well. The next day I was laying out in my yard and I spotted the same thing, looked like it was flying at about the same height, very slowly passing from W/SW to the East. I had my son run and grab my binoculars so I could get a better look at it. I have good quality Bushnell binoculars and I was able to track it pretty easily. Again, I am guessing it was roughly 100 meters in the air, same relative size, based on observation of the large trees we have around here. With my binoculars focused I got a pretty good look at it, and it was not a bird. This object had wings similar to a bird's, but again only moved the tips and very rarely. It's midsection was cigar shaped, very pointed both front and rear. We have large cranes and large ravens in the area, but ravens have a fanned tail when they ride thermals and cranes trail their legs. This was completely symmetrical, no trialing legs and no fanned tail. By my guess, based on the time of day and relative heat and wind, it pro! bably was not actually riding thermals either, it would have been too high up. My son and I watched it for about 3-5 minutes as it passed over. What was very odd is that it sped up dramatically once I but the binoculars on it, almost like it "knew" it was being watched. It disappeared to the east fairly quickly. Of note, the animals in the area (dogs, horses, goats, etc.) all seemed very perturbed when this was in the air...making lots of noise. I have been watching since then to see if I can spot it again and I have asked around locally and I can account at least 10 other people who have either seen the same object, or something almost exactly the same. Of interest too, when time permits my wife and I spend a lot of time stargazing, and we have also seen repeated appearances of unexplainable bright white lights that tend to travel southwest to northeast, we have reported this before and we have had numerous witnesses with us when we spot these things. On the Saturday evening before I spotted the bird we were out stargazing and watched what appeared at first to be a satellite pass over to the west of us slightly, moving from due north towards the south. However, roughly 20 seconds after we spotted it the object "split"...as in, there was a bright flash, and then there were suddenly two objects..one moving south at a much more rapid speed, and a brighter object moving north at a rapid speed. Both grew very bright after the flash and faded out. Logically, I suppose it could have been a meteor or space debris breaking up at re-entry but I have witnessed both of those types of things numerous times and the way this! object acted was quite different. We have also witnessed numerous other odd lights, mostly they seem to appear above the mountains to the north...they hover a bit, then zigzag around rapidly, sometimes they descend with a motion that is like a falling leaf, sometimes they shoot straight upward. I have an interest in ufology and have read numerous books on the subject, and what concerns me is that we have a personal set of sightings spanning over two years in the same area with multiple witnesses. Now, we are seeing a large "bird-like" object and the sightings continue. Every time we witness something like this we note the behavior of the animals in the area, most times they are very obviously disturbed. We have had instances of power anomalies in the neighborhood, and at times there have been areas around here that seem to emit a pervasive feeling of fear for no reason...all of this is strikingly similar to events reported by people in West Virginia in the Ohio River Valley in the 60's, as documented in several books but most notably John Keel's "The Mothman Prophecies". The events there culminated in the collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967. So many of the things we have seen parallel the reports in that book that it is hard to believe it! is simply coincidence. Bearing logical explanations in mind (the bird object could be some kind of drone, the lights could also, etc.) we are trying to keep an open but skeptical mind about these things, but the repeated incidents and so forth lead me to believe that this bears deeper investigation (which I will continue to do as an amateur).

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #110652). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.