Unknown over Shasta lake, CA

The report, as filed

I am a security guard at a dam with 8 years of time served in the U.S. Army. I’m an E-6 in the Army Reserve who holds a secret clearance. Witness 2 is a lieutenant at the dam. At precisely 307 AM, I was traveling by vehicle across the dam. I observed a light to the north which was of equal brightness to the North Star. I exited the vehicle at the center of the dam and noticed that two more lights had appeared above and below the original “star”. None of the lights were moving. The lights then faded and reappeared at different times, not synchronized with each other. I then finished crossing to the East side of the dam where I contacted my lieutenant and we looked together. During this time, with our bare eyes we witnessed some lights get bright then fade and some began to move, some in groups some as individuals. Some would disappear while moving, some would stop and remain lit before fading. This is when we decided they were not satellites seeing as how their movements did not match that of a satellite. At this point there were approximately 6 lights we could actively see. My lieutenant brought night vision lenses and through these we were able to observe many more lights that were not visible to our bare eyes. It’s important to note that throughout the duration or this, we thought some were simply just stars until they began moving and we realized how many there actually were. It seemed the longer we observed, the more we noticed. The lights seemed to like groups of triangles that were more obtuse and not perfect triangles. There were about 6 or 7 groups of triangles. They also sat in groups of 4 but not in perfect squares. I only observed 2 groups of 4. I viewed two that appeared to drop something at a great speed. The dropped “objects” would have looked like “shooting stars” had they not come directly from the moving lights. While moving the dropped “objects” would rapidly light up and disappear at a much greater speed than the other lights. Both my lieutenant and I both viewed one light that was bright like the others and slow moving but seemed to have an orb or beginning of some tail around it as if it were entering the atmosphere and meeting with extreme heat. This seemed like just a light to the naked eye but using night vision you could see the orb around it. My lieutenant left me the night vision and returned to his duties at this point and I then used my phone to record through night vision. I have approximately 16 total minutes of footage through the night vision. I am aware that some moving lights observed may be satellites, but many were not. Having irregular movements. These lights were observed north but stretched from East to West. Most appeared in the East but that is mostly where I was observing since that was the original area I had seen the lights. I have video of multiple going from still to moving, gaining brightness and fading and one that appeared to drop something. This anomaly continued until the Sun appeared and there was nothing visible in the sky once this happened.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #178410). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.