The first sighting was at five in the morning in November 2021. The witness was exercising in his house when he noticed lights outside the back window. He thought someone was in the yard with a flashlight. When he went outside, a singular light split into two or three, formed a triangular pattern with a light in the centre, and remained for approximately ten minutes. While filming on his smartphone, he accidentally triggered the flash. The lights immediately disappeared.
He had lived at the property since 2021 and had never seen anything like it. He described himself as a sceptic with no prior interest in the subject. In the years that followed, he saw hundreds of these lights. He set up trail cameras. He deployed sensors. He measured gamma radiation on his property and found that spikes in the readings correlated with times he observed the objects. His electronics and GPS devices showed unusual effects during the observations. He used ADS-B flight data to cross-reference his sightings against aircraft flight paths, systematically ruling out conventional traffic. He was, in effect, conducting his own investigation using the same deconfliction methodology that the Pentagon’s AARO would later apply to its own cases.
The lights appeared at dusk and at night. They hovered, moved laterally, morphed in shape. They were observed above the tree line, close to the ground, within the trees, and near the water. On at least one occasion, they were as close as two hundred yards from the house. His neighbour to the south independently reported seeing “strange lights in the tree line behind their house.”
He reached out through professional channels and was eventually referred to the FBI in August 2024. The case was filed under the Bureau’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon Division. By October 2024, he had provided multiple sets of video clips and a detailed presentation to FBI special agents.
The Bureau’s response was methodical. In November 2024, agents conducted a site survey of the property, documenting the terrain, tree lines, and sight lines with twenty-four photographs. The witness took agents down into a wooded area approximately two hundred yards from the house where a trail camera had been capturing activity. He offered to have FBI equipment installed on his property and to coordinate evening visits during times when the phenomena were typically observed.
The agents accepted.
On an evening in November 2024, two special agents visited the property to confirm the reports. The weather was forty-eight degrees, overcast, no precipitation. At approximately 4:45 in the afternoon, the agents and the witness went out to the patio on the north side of the house.
Twenty minutes later, one of the agents observed a white pulsation of light at the northern edge of a nearby body of water. It moved horizontally with erratic movements. The light did not reflect off the water surface. It did not illuminate the ground below it. It appeared at an altitude at or below the tree line, danced side to side for less than ten seconds, and disappeared.
On multiple occasions within the tree line to the west, the agents observed white lights appearing at treetop height, pulsing and flashing in a white and blue hue before disappearing. They also observed plumes of broad light appearing for several seconds before a flash of red or white light moved erratically and vanished.
At approximately 5:30, both agents observed what they assessed to be a UAP at the far end of a pond: a bright white light above a bright red light, hovering at treetop height. It moved quickly from right to left, disappeared, then reappeared simultaneously at its original position. It moved right to left again and disappeared a second time. Both agents observed this activity.
One agent attempted to photograph what they were seeing. Five photos were taken, but the long exposure without a tripod produced blurry images. The agents noted that a stable platform would be required for future attempts.
In December 2024, the agents returned in daylight to survey the areas where they had observed the phenomena. Walking a two-mile perimeter, they descended to the water’s edge and confirmed full line of sight to the witness’s property. They found nothing unusual on the ground or at treetop level. Their assessment of the physical environment was direct: “Tree cover throughout the area was moderate and Agents assessed that it would be unrealistic for someone to fly a drone or other craft at night without the risk of crashing into tree limbs.”
Weeks later, the witness and a companion observed a red sphere approximately one metre in diameter hovering below the tree line in the backyard. At its centre was what the witness described as “a white plasma sun about the size of a basketball.” A second, identical orb appeared above the first. They moved together, merged into one, and departed. The witness captured video. A companion, viewing from approximately thirty yards, independently confirmed the observation and described the object’s colour as “brilliant and beautiful,” a red unlike anything previously encountered.
The case file, as released through PURSUE, contains seven documents spanning initial contact through direct FBI observation to daylight follow-up. The gamma radiation correlation, the video evidence, the ADS-B deconfliction, the FBI agents’ own eyewitness accounts, and the drone exclusion form a body of evidence that is, in its accumulation, difficult to set aside. The witness who started as a sceptic with a flashlight theory is now the subject of an active FBI investigation, and the agents sent to verify his claims saw what he had been telling them about for three years.
