Light over Shoreline, WA

The report, as filed

I live in Shoreline, Washington, (North of Seattle). I’m married with one child, he’s 4. I am a career Journey-person in Machine Repair. I have a solid foundation in sights in the sky as I am an avid sky watcher, but mainly for aircraft and when weather is clear, stars, satellites and the I.S.S.. I work for Boeing in the 737 MAX factory down in Renton, yes, it’s a tough time….I’m not here to discus MAX issues, all apologies. But what I and my family witnessed tonight, I have to get out there. Full disclosure: I am a believer in life outside of humanity, the universe is too big to believe otherwise. I also have had 2 prior UAP sightings. One, in Michigan driving south on 127 from Lansing to Jackson, was significant (to me) as I witnessed a bright light pulsating between green and blue, watched for several minutes then it accelerated to, what I can only estimate, about 1,800 to 2,100 MPH at maybe a 70-80 degree angle perpendicular to the horizon. It was interesting. I texted my future wife and told her “I saw a UFO”. She was and is a skeptic. I’m ok with that. Fast forward 9 years to tonight, January 28th, 2020. Look, I am being so talkative because I want you and everyone to know I’m just a normal guy who loves RC crawlers, airplanes/spacecraft, the stars…maybe I’m trying to hard. I don’t know. Either way, here was the sighting from tonight: I went out to take the trash out. Normal Tuesday night routine. As always, if I get a chance to look up I do. I have seen our (Boeing’s) 747 Dream Lifter lining up to land at Paine Field in Everett WA 4 times now since we moved to the Seattle area, and it’s a beautiful bird! Anyway tonight it is partly cloudy, I notice the clouds are fairly fast moving, traversing to the north at many MPH. Fast enough that it makes the stars breaking through look as if they are moving to the South. As I stated before I have seen satellites and the I.S.S. and am familiar with civilian passenger aircraft flying at 40,000 (or so) feet…they have navigation beacons and strobe lights to identify direction of travel and weather they are above or below you. But what I saw next baffled me at first. I saw a satellite. I “knew” this because the “dot”/“point of light” was larger than a star and traversing on a west to east trajectory. I “knew” it was a satellite for about 2-3 seconds, it went behind a cloud….and then another “satellite” appeared in the same spot the other one had from behind a cloud traveling in the same direction. My senses perked up. For the next minute I watched several more “satellites” traverse the same section of sky, some were in loose formation, not military precision type formation, but two offset with one trailing back as if it was part of a delta formation. I thought about trying to take a video or pic with my iPhone but knew this wouldn’t work. Next best option, I ran to the front door and said (with enough “worry” in my voice as I dare) “Babe, can you come look at this? I want you to see it!” My wife, probably thinking the worst: crashed car, somebody in danger….she is a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner after all, she quickly grabbed shoes and cak! e outside. Our son was curious too at the excitement so I picked him up and carried him out. I pointed up and said I saw something flying between the clouds. And to my delight, and with no more suggestive descriptions, the lights kept traversing cloud breaks. I asked my wife, “did you see that?” Wife, “all I see is an airplane” I explained what I saw before alerting her and almost on cue, two more traversed in again, a loose formation, and she said “yea those are really close” At this point I’m really trying hard to NOT use terms like UFO or Aliens!!! Cuz well, skeptics. She knows I know airplanes, she knows I can point out a satellite or the rare ISS transit. I pointed out how the direction the”lights” were traveling was perpendicular to cloud/star travel. Faster. And also no Nav lights…at all. She said “We live close to a military base” She is correct, Whidbey Naval Air base to the West and Louise McChord to the way south. I agreed with her, could be military…. Yet I poin! ted out that the “objects” never came back out from behind the! cloud t hat obscured them. While we were watching, a passenger airliner passed behind that same cloud heading north, Nav lights and all, then reappeared in the same general cloud break we saw the “lights” in. I said “see, that’s an airplane, and it did exactly what it should do, blink and strobe, go behind clouds and cone out on the other side” My son was begging to go back in uninterested, again I was NOT using suggestive language, and my wife said she needed to go to the grocery store before she could get our son to bed so I could sleep as well. While she was gone I went back out to observe. I saw to more airliners traveling north, one more object as the previous but it looked as though it was traveling west to east on a more northern trek. And then about 6-7 minutes later one more “object” that was traveling same direction as the others, but I only saw it briefly. When my wife returned, I didn’t want to freak her out, or if she was, perpetuate the fear. I told her “I know what we saw” she gave me the ‘look’. I said “it wasn’t a UFO” she looked at me and said “no?” “No babe, those were UAP’s” again a question look. “Unidentifiable Aerial Phenomenon, we don’t know WHAT those were” She accepted, to my surprise. Again, I’m not here to spread some outlandish “experience”, I’m a normal dude, father, husband and Precision Machine Repair-person…just wanted to get this down and out there while it was fresh in my mind!

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #152949). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.