Unexplained lights in a Hoosier night sky

I haven’t thought much about it over the years, much less shared the story either in spoken word or print. After all, most things we observe which defy a clear explanation, much less understand, eventually tend to get filed into the misty realm embedded deep into our memory banks.

It was late summer of 1978 and me, my then-wife and first-born infant daughter, were driving to her parents’ house in rural Vanderburgh County, Ind. It was twilight and we made our way over the meandering road when we noticed three objects glowing and blinking in the sky over farmers’ fields. They didn’t appear to move much, yet, the closer we got to our destination, their collective illumination seemed to intensify.

We didn’t think much of it; it seemed likely these were the lights of National Guard choppers, or perhaps some reflections making final approach to Dress Regional Airport in Evansville. As we got out of the car, the mom-in-law met us in the driveway and gestured off in the distance. Did you see those on your way in?

The three of us looked at the spectacle, shimmering perhaps a mile or so away. We were transfixed as the objects appeared to be arranged in a slight pyramid shape and their lights were rhythmically alternating colors of red, green and white. Never moving and holding their place in mid-air. I don’t know how long we watched this go on, but after a while they disappeared one by one. And we went into the house.

I vaguely recall thinking, Well, that was pretty weird and something you don’t see every day in southwestern Indiana.  It felt weird, neither good nor bad. 

The next day or so, there was a small story in the local newspaper about others having observed the airborne mystery. I puzzled over all of this for a few days and then that experience melted away.  

The UFO craze has ebbed and flowed like a gentle Caribbean shoreline for eons. In modern times they have been explained as atmospheric anomalies, top-secret military exercises, wayward weather balloons and other reasonable answers. Rational explanations all.

More popular and scintillating are those who subscribe to the belief we have visitors from distant stars and perhaps other dimensions – that we are being observed and studied by superior beings who have traveled the oceans of time to be nothing more than intergalactic voyeurs.

Others suggest we are being visited by angels. Perhaps. But the angels I have met are the unlikely folks who come into our lives from time to time when we need them.

And some believe that such visitations include abductions to figure out what makes us tick mentally and biologically; or some advanced mission to prepare for an invasion.

It all piques my interest somewhat, though I don’t dwell on most theories involving cute ETs, close encounters of any kind and cheesy metallic dudes who swoop in and benignly proclaim,   We come in peace. If the latter is true, I hope they are sincere.

We are so given to search universe for discoveries and understanding – and rightfully so – yet many of us don’t know the names of our next-door neighbors. The greatest mysteries we face with are closer to terra firma: how to feed the starving, end war, keep our little niches of the world clean and safe, pave a decent future we will not live to see. And on and on and on.

I wonder what our ancient ancestors thought when they gazed up into the evening sky and saw the moon or that blazing daytime ball. I suspect they did these things thought, but were more interested in finding food, shelter and keeping wild beasts and other barbarians outside the gate.

That experience on a long-ago summer night still puzzles me. I will never know what those lights shining over Hoosier farmland were.

I would like to think those unexplained sky-high objects, in some small measure, have kept me better grounded in the world I inhabit.