Unknown over Fairbanks, AK

The report, as filed

Driving with a friend on the Steese Highway in town between third street and 10th Ave, we saw a very brightly lit craft hovering only about thirty feet or so above the residential area by the VFW. It caught my eye because the lights were so intense and it was just hovering there almost motionless, but not. At first I thought it was a new street light, but then it moved slightly and the body of the thing was either totally black or invisible. We were stopped at the light on third and Steese and nobody else seemed to see it except for the two of us--(I was going to pull off the road after the intersection but thought the best of it and moved on, so that could have been what others were doing as well, but it just seemed as though people ignored it completely). I rolled the window down to get a better look and listen to see if it was a helicopter while thinking of it oddly out of place if it were. I have seldom, if ever seen helicopters hovering that close to rooftops of residential areas before without police and the rest of the gang there; it seemed out of place to me. It was about the size of a large single rotor helicopter though, and either had a flat bottom that held the array of lights, or it was just a flat platform altogether. I did not make out anything above the lights at all, as if it was completely invisible or inky black against the night sky. It made no noise and the platform with the lights was rectangular, but could have been triangular as far as I could tell as I was driving past it. I kept asking my friend to look for the craft itself and describe it to me but he had no explanation and couldn't see anything above the lights either. Even having his head out the window,to my surprise he still just passed it off as some sort of 'military thing', and paid it little more attention than that.. It tilted slightly and moved a few feet here and there kind of like a bee collecting pollen. I kept glancing at it as I went past, and looked for it in the rear view mirror after it should have come into view. Oddly enough, that made me start paying attention to the night sky a lot more. I shared my story with a few others just to see if maybe they had seen something similar, or to see if their reactions were similar to how my friend acted. I soon found two others who saw crafts as well, and for some reason both of them also shrugged it off too. I noticed that much taller and very brilliant street lights started to appear around town less than a week later. The first new street light I saw was at the Ford dealership which was practically the same height and intensity as those on the craft I had seen earlier, but they didn't span the same area at all, and were clearly stationary lights. Still, my eyes snap to those new lamps because the brilliance is very similar to what was on the craft. Last night, 4/10/15 at around 01:30, I saw another one of those strange crafts hovering over a community just off of Chena Hot Springs Road. There was a bank of mail boxes coming up on Bias Drive and so this time I pulled over to get a better look. Again, I heard nothing at all and the craft seemed lazily going about it's business in the same manner as the other one I saw. This one was moving slowly off towards the Steese and went over the ridge towards town. I noticed two other people had pulled off the road there as well, and were standing next to a vehicle talking. I was intent on gaining some higher ground over at nearby Weller School, so we only exchanged eye contact as I pulled away. At the school, there was no sign of the craft at all over the part of the city I could see. I get the impression that they pose as stars, or sometimes very bright street lights. I also think that most people refuse to believe that they saw anything unusual, even if they can't explain what they saw. I also noticed some similarities between my observations and that of others on this database such as the red, mostly white and blue lights, flat bottom, silent and stealthy aspects, as well as my having heard what seemed like a sonar sound before too while reading late one night--but I didn't look out the window to see if there was anything there. Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #118432). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.