Your sighting reports:

Subject: UFO report from Massachusetts, USA
Date: May 20, 2008
From: [name].[firstname@comcast.net
Attachments: lightshape(2).jpg 100 KB lightshapelayers2.mp4 3 MB

Dear Mr. Patrick Gross,

My sister saw something highly unusual from the windows of her second floor apartment in Hyannis, Massachusetts,USA. She is 56 years old and works as an artist and designer. She is very good at creating animation using her Mac computer. I asked her to write down the experience she had so that I could report the incident as a possible UFO. She did that for me and she also supplied me with the picture and the animation that I have attached. The picture (lightshape2.jpg) is a representation of the object on a photograph of the tops of the two trees where the object appeared to hover. The animation (lightshapelayers2.mp4) is her attempt to represent the shifting nature of the object?at times amorphous and without apparent boundaries of edges, at times with edges more distinct. She says it is a pretty good representation of what she saw. We both use Macs so I hope it translates well to PC computers--you probably need Quicktime to view the attachments.

I recently reported this incident to MUFON and to the National UFO Reporting Center (both in the USA). Today I came across your website and I thought I should send the report along to you, too. You have done a wonderful job with your website...great research and a lot of effort which I admire and I congratulate you wholeheartedly. Bravo!

Here is what my sister wrote about her experience:

We were being lashed by the remnants of Hurricane Noel (Nov 2 or 3, 2007--I can't remember the exact date but I think it was the 2nd. There was gale force wind, thunder, lightning, heavy rain.I was sitting in my computer room near the window in my second-floor studio when I noticed that there was something strange about the lightning. There was too much of it, it was like watching a strobe light, and the thunder didn't seem to correspond. It was like the lightning was spelling out something in Morse Code. Dit dit dit dit, etc. And it was too near, too bright and very unusual. I started to feel a little uneasy. But it was just a storm so I waited. I decided that I should turn off the computer because it was the type of weather that causes power outages. Just after doing so I sat quietly in the darkness of the room for a while. Then there was a bright flash and a brilliant light illuminated the entire yard, driveway and all the nearby area about 30 feet in every direction (an estimate). But it still didn't seem like lightning, and I did not want to look out for fear of what I might see. It felt strange and scary because the illumination lasted for several minutes without flickering or changing although it was clearly undulating. It was brighter than broad daylight--maybe10 times brighter than a cloudless summer day at noon. I wanted to believe that this was ordinary lightning but something scared me and something in me really did not want to know what it was out there, even though I was compelled to look. I had a sense of fear that made me want to crawl under the table. But I sat still and looked out of the north window at the yard and rooftop of the cottage next door. I could see everything clearly bathed in this brilliant white light. It was like there was a giant magnifying lamp, and it stayed unmoving and illuminated, undulating for a long stretch of time, possibly 5-10 minutes. All this time I was sitting rooted to my chair with a window in front (north-facing) and another window to my right (east facing window), both with wide-open views of the weather phenomena outdoors. At this point in time, I was just witnessing what I thought to be a very unusual lightning storm.

Suddenly the light just went out, or rather seemed to have rolled away. It was dark, save for the intermittent 'dits' of light that I described as being regular and code-like. I felt a sense of relief-I noticed after the fact that I was very tense. During the episode I was transfixed, I could have moved but I was trying to focus with all of my senses because of the unusual nature of the lightning so I stayed seated in my chair. When the lights suddenly went out, I moved closer to the window on my right (east)- which has a parallel view of the cottage and property behind my house. I was glad whatever it was, was gone. I knew whatever it was, was strange.

Then the light suddenly appeared again, brilliant as ever, illuminating everything, making everything seem like bright and flat white light, filling the sky and everything reflecting it in a bright white glow. I got a really creepy feeling and then I looked out and up over the back of the cottage, in a space like a little valley between two treetops, there seemed to be a consolidated light-ball of some sort: large, like the size of a bus maybe, round and with a concentrated brilliance that was outlined by a thin gradated line--which made the shape seem to blend with the surrounding brilliance. Immediately I thought I was seeing a UFO, then I ducked under the table, the surface of which is about a foot above the window's lower ledge. It's an old drawing board and I had it backed up to the window. Under the table I could look out at it. I looked at it, stared at it, frozen with fear but compelled by curiosity. I was watching it and almost couldn't breathe. I saw it seem to change shape, as if the thin gradated line modulated, it reminded me of pixilation overlap used in film special effects to depict morphing, it changed from a round circle to a diamond shape, with what seemed like symmetrical filigree-like 'steps' making the edges seem dimensional and not flat. It was like a ragged-edged diamond and the edges again were softly outlined by a thin gradated line. It reminded me of the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich's painting 'White on White', a painting consisting of a tilted white square on a white backgound. Only a slight variation of brushstroke allows the viewer to see the shape emerge. As difficult as it was to stare for long at the object because of its brightness, the edges of the object were very unusual and detailed, with various tiers along the edges coming forward and receding.

After watching it for a minute or two I got really scared and ducked down under the table. I felt like it was a UFO type of thing, even though I kept trying to frame it within my usual knowledge and expectations, all the while 'knowing' that it didn't fit into any frame of reference in my experience, and that there had to be an intelligence involved so I started to 'talk' to it, saying 'Please go away, you're scaring me' and 'I don't want to get abducted' and stuff like that. I remember saying, 'whatever you do, don't hurt my cats'.

But I felt a sense of fear and panic that was undeniable. There was no thunder. I crawled out of the studio on my hands and knees because I didn't want to be 'seen' even though I already felt like I had been seen and there was no escaping it. I entered the living room where there is a large picture window facing the same direction (east) as the window in the studio with the table. I stayed on the floor. The illumination in the general area remained for some time but fright kept me from looking anymore so I don't know what might have happened. However, after a few more minutes the illumination dissipated, there was darkness and a few 'dits' of light again, but then it was as if the storm had just quieted down a little, everything seemed again like a normal storm--there was regular lightning, but it was farther away and had the accompanying distant thunder, it continued to rain and the winds continued through the night. I had a feeling like I didn't know if I had seen what I had seen.

So I constructed a still image showing the relative positioning above the trees, just to serve my memory and help me to realize that whatever it was that I saw, it was something unusual. I followed that with making a short animation as well to show what it looked like, which I think I have captured reasonably well although it is very difficult to 'say' in film with so much whiteness. I have been experimenting with animation techniques for the last 8 years so I knew what I had to do to make the movie look like what I saw. I am self-taught and there is a certain roughness to it because of gaps in my technical knowledge.