UFO Sighting Report
Oak Harbor, Washington
January 28, 1988
Principal Witness: Jerry Lang, age 45
MUFON Field Investigator:
Don Olson, Bothell, Washington
Narrative:
I ma
rked the date down on the calendar. On midnight of the
27th (or Thurs
day morning, January 28th) I was heading home down
my driveway when I saw these 4 lights off to the right of Ika
Island. There was 3 oran
ge lights and a red light. I saw the
lights to the right of the islan
d, over the mouth of the [North
Fork of the] Skagit River [near the to
wn of La Conner,
Washington]. I thought, well, the Indians fish in th
e river for
Steelhead--gillnetting--and I thought, it must be somebody
was
missing and the Navy was out looking for them in a helicopter.
So I hopped out of the car
and ran in the house and grabbed my
binoculars.
I co
uld see it was no helicopter and I could have heard it
if it was becau
se the next night one came by, and I could hear
it from here to there.
So then I put the spotting scope [45x]
on it and I couldn't see very g
ood with it because it was very
fuzzy. I should have probably turned it down [it was set on the
highest power], but I didn't think a
bout it, you know. So I
just grabbed my binoculars and started lookin
g and I thought,
well, maybe there are some houses there I don't know
about, but
I knew there were no houses in that direction.
I watched for 10-15 minutes. The orange lights got
brighter and dimme
r while the red light stayed pretty much the
same. I thought, "well, that sure is odd", and I kept
trying to
figure it out. I could also see a little bit of white light
out
of the bottom of it, like it was shining [a beam of light]
down. I sat here watching the lights and it never did move [the
witne
ss had the impression that all of the lights were part of
the same obj
ect].
All of a sudden a "strobe light" flashed on top of the
thing. Five to ten seconds later a single light appeared to the
left. Off to the left, where the little hill is in there, up
about ha
lf as high as Ika Island. The light "just appeared". I
didn't see it
go over there, it just appeared there.
It started getting b
righter and dimmer; it got real bright
and turned perfectly round, jus
t like a fish egg or a balloon,
and had a glow, a little halo all the way around it. Then t
he
light got dimmer and started toward the ground and became more
disk shaped as it went down [note: the object could have
changed its
orientation to the witness to "edge on" or the
change in shape could h
ave been the result of atmospheric
conditions].
Page Two
Oak Harbor, Washington
UFO Report, January 28, 1988
It went down to the ground. I watched for another 5-10
minutes, when two lights appeared, over the land, at about the
same he
ight in the sky, three-quarters the height of Ika
Island. Both lights
turned perfectly round like an orange ball,
with halos, then they star
ted down to the ground becoming disk
shaped about half way down to the
ground. One went clear to the
ground, the other I could see the light of in the treetops of a
bushy area.
So they both disappeared from view. Mea
nwhile that big
thing always stayed there on the right with the three
orange
lights and one red light on it. Another ten minutes or so went
by, while these lights on the one remaining object continued
ge
tting brighter and dimmer. A strobe light flashed again, and
within 2
0-30 seconds started getting very bright--like the sun.
I could see th
e right end of the object illuminated by the
light, and it looked just
like that [sketch, which shows half of
a small oval on top of half of
a larger oval]. The light glowed
for maybe 30-40 seconds, and went ou
t. As the light got dimmer,
there was a dull after-glow in the area,
like the after-glow you
get from a TV screen after you turn off the set.
I sat f
or another half hour watching it. By this time it
was getting to be a
bout 1:50 a.m. and the dull-glowing light was
still there but it wasn'
t doing anything so I decided to go to
bed. I set the alarm to go off
at 3:00 a.m. to check on it. I
woke up at 2:45 a.m. before the alarm
went off and looked, and
it was gone.
I had the feeling that when the strobe light went off and
five seconds later whe
n the other two lights appeared that
something came out of that big th
ing and went over there. Maybe
when the strobe light flashed one more
time they came off the
ground and went back in it or something. I saw
3 objects total,
and the one on the right was much bigger than the two
on the
left. They appeared to be round balls as big as hot-air
balloons, looking through t
he binoculars. The distance across
[from Whidbey Island] to there is
one and a half to two miles to
that flat area over the river there. I
knew there shouldn't be
any houses there.
The next t
hing I thought was that maybe there was a fire up
on the foothills. W
hen I got up the next morning the first
thing I did was use the spotting scope to look all over that
hillside and there hadn't been anythi
ng burning over there.
So I called MacIndoe because I'd rea
d the newspaper article
about his sighting and that's what he said he
saw--a round
orange ball, so what I saw must have been the same deal.
Page Three
Oak Harbor, Washington
UFO Report, January 28,
1988
I've got an airplane up in Anacortes. I'm a private
p
ilot. Three to four days later I flew my plane from Anacortes
on a be
aring from my home right over the spot. There are a few
little cabins
there by the river and a couple of farms back in
there behind La Conne
r. Other than that there is nothing in
there.
Pre
liminary rating:
Speiser Classification S4/P3
Be
rliner Coefficient 2 (night object) x 1 (single witness)
= 2.0
Prepared by Don Olson & Donald A. Johnson
File: OAKHARBR.UFO
6912-T
03-APR-88
Dir: 12 Sec: 1 - UFOlogy
From: Donald Johnson
Acc:
7
Whidbey Island UFO #2 1/28/88
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