Teardrop over Hardy, VA

The report, as filed

First,I am slightly embarrassed and hesitant to provide this information, but I really need to know and understand what this was I saw. I'm guessing near midnight, I happened to be outside heading to my car, from a friend's house to head home for the night. When I noticed something directly above the tree line. I was carrying a flashlight as I walked to the car. I pointed the flashlight in the direction of the dark object in the sky, unsure as to if my eyes were playing some trick or if there really was something there. As I pointed my flashlight at this, whatever it may be, the sky literally lit up. It went from rather dark to quite bright, all at once. Just above the tree line, I now see a super bright something I cannot even describe. My first thought was, what is a helicopter doing so low to the ground, and for whatever reason I started flashing my flashlight on and off as if I wanted to communicate with the helicopter. Then I notice this helicopter is making no noise, and has no wind of any kind. The next thing I notice is, as I started flashing my flashlight, it turned colorful. It had colors literally swirling around and around this object, reminding me of a small helicopter completely enclosed in glass with fiber optics within, causing these colorful lights that are spinning around and around this object. The colors seemed mostly oranges and reds, even blues and yellows but swirling around and around very fast unlike anything I have ever saw. At this point I am yelling for people in the house to either come out or at least look my direction to see how bright the area was lit up. Just as fast as it was there it was gone, literally in the blink of an eye. I do not know what I witnessed, I keep assuming some sort of military aircraft or something to that effect. But, I need some sort of explanation. There was no sound, no wind and I really cannot say for sure, but I swear I thought I could make out a single figure inside these lights, but I am truly uncertain on that. The more I think on this matter, more and more questions seem to come to mind. Now, I am scared my imagination is running wild with this. Though, when my friend did come out to see what all the screaming and yelling was about, he can attest to how truly freaked out and uncertain I was about everything except this object was really there and not imagined. After having thought on this a week or so, and having looked up and read various reports on-line about FBI surveillance aircraft, and military testing I now and more uncertain than before, because that don't make much sense. This is a very rural area near Smith Mountain Lake Virginia. What could possibly be there that would ever need surveillance? Again, I am uncertain as to this, but it is certainly something that my eyes and limited knowledge did not and do not recognize. I am very hesitant to even tell anyone about this, but I would like to know if its something explainable. I just used a notepad on my laptop to compose this small report which does not have a spell check built in, but I have done the best that I can with this. I hope it is enough to be taken seriously. Thanks for any time and effort involved in reading this. I do give my word on my very name that this was not imagined.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #147140). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.