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 (Download Read Quit ?):