Light over Fort Collins, CO
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
21:50 - While driving west on Harmony Rd., about 2 miles east from I-25, I observed a light appear very high on the horizon. It was falling as it began to illuminate, so my immediate thought was that it was just a shooting star. However, before I could finish that thought the light came to a very abrupt stop and became a steady in its intensity. This of course caught my attention. I was on a call at the time and began to tell the other person what I was seeing. As I crossed over the Harmony & I-25 overpass, heading into Fort Collins, I once again observed the light drop another 5-10 degrees closer to the horizon; going from what appeared to be a semi-fixed position, rapidly dropping, and then coming to another abrupt stop. It was still fairly high on the horizon. Soon after stopping it began to increase in intensity and then rapidly dim. It went through 3 or 4 cycles of this behavior. On the last cycle it went completely out and looked like it had disappeared. After about 1 minute it came back in exactly the same spot but only at about half of its previous intensity. About 30 seconds after it had appeared again I observed it shoot out what looked like a missle towards the ground, at a 45 degree angle. The “missle” came out of the north side of the object. The light coming from the projectile disappeared when it got about halfway to the ground. 21:56 - At this point I was near the Harmony & Ziegler intersection still heading west on Harmony. At this point I observed the light once again drop at a rapid raid and abruptly stop about 5 degrees above the mountains. It appeared to be just north of horsetooth rock. 22:00 - Earlier I had told the person that I was on the phone with that I would pick them up if the light was still visible by the time I got to their house. I wanted someone else to see what I was seeing. I arrived at 22:00 and we drove to a nearby park on Boardwalk to observe the light. 22:03 - We arrived at the park and we could see the light low on the horizon. It initially didn’t seem like it was moving but we noticed that if we used the tops of the trees as a point of reference then we could tell that it was in fact moving but very slowly. We made it a point to observe the few faint stars we could see and compare their movement to the light. It was clear that the light was moving much faster than any other stats we observed. 22:10 - Other than slowly move further north the light wasn’t doing much. It had drifted far enough north that it was behind a tall tree and we could no longer see it. At this point we left the park and I drove them back home. They did agree with me that the light was behaving very oddly but obviously hadn’t exhibited any of the crazy behavior like I saw a few minutes prior. 22:13 - After I dropped them off I called my mother who lives out east of I-25 near Harmony rd. I asked her if she could see a bright amber light low on the horizon, about where horsetooth rock would be. She said she did see a light and that it appeared to be flickering. I told her about my experience and she sort of laughed it off. I told her to keep watching because I wouldn’t be surprised if it did something else. I said good and hung up the phone. 22:15 - My mother called me back very excited because she said she saw the light move from the stationary spot she had first observed it at. She said it was getting very bright then then quickly dimming to the point where she couldn’t see it. This went on for about 10 minutes until it dimmed completely out. For about a minute she assumed it was gone but then gasped and said she saw it appear further to the north. Not unlike my experience she said it started to illuminate while it was still moving and then abruptly stopped. It then went back into its routine of getting very bright and then dimming almost out. It did this for about 5 more minutes until it dimmed out and never re-appeared. ~22:35 - End of event.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #142315). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2018-07-15 → 2018-08-01
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