Unknown over Silver Cliff, WI

The report, as filed

11:00pm. At my cabin in northern Wisconsin 25 miles northwest of Crivitz in rural wooded area. Thousands of acres of public hunting land with no homes across the road. Half full moon clearly seen. Venus very bright in the night sky. The younger kids just went to bed. I walked outside to smoke a cigarette with a friend. We both heard an animal screaming in the distance. In the same area we could see a very bright light through the trees. We stood there trying to figure out what this light was for several minutes. It didn't move. After a few minutes of not being able to figure out what it was we walked to the road 50' away. Looking down the county road about a quarter mile and about 100 yards to the right into the woods you could see a very bright light, about the intensity of a street light, just below the tops of the trees. Probably 60' in the air.The light was shining down as you could see the cone of light was smaller near the tops of the trees than on the branches closer to the ground. Venus was clearly above it and very bright in the night sky. The half full moon was clearly in a very different part of the night sky. We couldn't hear any sound so it wasn't a helicopter. It was too big and bright to be a drone or a chinese lantern on a string. We could see no red blinking lights that would identify it as a aircraft. There are no street lights for miles and miles. After about 5 mins we walked back to the cabin and my friends wife came out. We turned to show her the lights and they were gone. We all were looking across the street into a wide clearing at the night sky and it looked like a star exploded and disappeared in a very bright flash. I listened for a report thinking the flash may have been fireworks but there was no sound. I said out loud, did everyone just see that? Yes. It was a very bright flash that disappeared into nothingness? Yes. Any ideas on what it could have been? No. It kinda looked like a star wars ship going into hyperspace but no one noticed a ship, just the very bright flash of light. No one was drinking or high on weed. We all have college degrees and can not figure out a logical explanation of the lights we saw. Why didn't we take a picture? No one had a camera or phone on them (poor cell phone reception in the area of the cabin) and I thought there was probably a logical explanation to the lights and didn't think it necessitated me running into the cabin to try to find my camera to take a picture of lights that we would be able to logically conclude it's origins in a minute.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #176094). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.