Mysterious Red Lights Appear Over Southland- Again
Southland, IL (United States):
They're back.
Those peculiar pulsing red lights reappeared over Southland skies early Saturday morning, causing many a neck to crane upward and many a police switchboard to light up with calls.
A trio of steady red lights seemed to swim across the western night sky starting about 11 p.m. Friday night and reappearing after midnight. The three dots at times formed a triangular shape, but they then seemed to straighten into a line, much like sightings in the same area late last summer and on Halloween, witnesses told the Daily Southtown.
Cindy Evans, of Tinley Park, was out with her kids Friday night when about 11 p.m. her 8-year-old daughter Emily spotted the mysterious lights in the clear night sky near 163rd Street and Prairie Drive.
"It was almost like they were stars — they were far enough away that they were like stars," Evans said.
Nope, she decided. Too red.
In fact, Evans and other witnesses were quick to say what the lights were not: satellites (too low); a reflection (too intense); an airplane (too slow); and a helicopter (too quiet), among other things.
Evans said she called the Federal Aviation Association looking for an answer and was disappointed they couldn't offer one. The FAA did not return the Southtown's calls.
The lights weren't weather-related, either, since the National Weather Service reported nothing unusual, a spokesman said. Had the luminous phenomenon been meteorological, NWS satellites would have picked up something — like the night NWS registered a meteorite that fell into a Park Forest home in 2003.
"One guy was out measuring the rain, checking the rain gauges, and saw the flash," the spokesman said. "It was well heard down here in the Tinley Park and Joliet area."
None of the witnesses wanted to use the word "UFO" to describe what they saw, even though, technically, the lights were some kind of unidentified flying object.
Still, it didn't take long for Southlanders to log onto a national UFO reporting site to quantify what they witnessed, photographed and filmed.
National UFO Reporting Center director Peter B. Davenport said he already had received about a dozen reports of this incident at his Web site, www.ufocenter.com. That didn't mean Davenport, whose site collected hundreds of reports from last year's sightings, had an answer.
"I have absolutely no idea what is causing them," he said.
"I cannot rule out the possibility that these lights are of terrestrial origin (or) of human manufacture."
Tinley Park police received a number of calls beginning late Friday night. Orland Park police reported three calls about the lights. Police didn't seem to have any answers.
That frustrated a woman who wouldn't give her name.
"They don't seem to care what it is," she said. "I'd like to know what it is — I saw one red light come through the east sky, coming from the south going to the north."
Oct 2, 2005
Lauren FitzPatrick, Chicago Daily Southtown, IL
Southland, IL (United States):
They're back.
Those peculiar pulsing red lights reappeared over Southland skies early Saturday morning, causing many a neck to crane upward and many a police switchboard to light up with calls.
A trio of steady red lights seemed to swim across the western night sky starting about 11 p.m. Friday night and reappearing after midnight. The three dots at times formed a triangular shape, but they then seemed to straighten into a line, much like sightings in the same area late last summer and on Halloween, witnesses told the Daily Southtown.
Cindy Evans, of Tinley Park, was out with her kids Friday night when about 11 p.m. her 8-year-old daughter Emily spotted the mysterious lights in the clear night sky near 163rd Street and Prairie Drive.
"It was almost like they were stars — they were far enough away that they were like stars," Evans said.
Nope, she decided. Too red.
In fact, Evans and other witnesses were quick to say what the lights were not: satellites (too low); a reflection (too intense); an airplane (too slow); and a helicopter (too quiet), among other things.
Evans said she called the Federal Aviation Association looking for an answer and was disappointed they couldn't offer one. The FAA did not return the Southtown's calls.
The lights weren't weather-related, either, since the National Weather Service reported nothing unusual, a spokesman said. Had the luminous phenomenon been meteorological, NWS satellites would have picked up something — like the night NWS registered a meteorite that fell into a Park Forest home in 2003.
"One guy was out measuring the rain, checking the rain gauges, and saw the flash," the spokesman said. "It was well heard down here in the Tinley Park and Joliet area."
None of the witnesses wanted to use the word "UFO" to describe what they saw, even though, technically, the lights were some kind of unidentified flying object.
Still, it didn't take long for Southlanders to log onto a national UFO reporting site to quantify what they witnessed, photographed and filmed.
National UFO Reporting Center director Peter B. Davenport said he already had received about a dozen reports of this incident at his Web site, www.ufocenter.com. That didn't mean Davenport, whose site collected hundreds of reports from last year's sightings, had an answer.
"I have absolutely no idea what is causing them," he said.
"I cannot rule out the possibility that these lights are of terrestrial origin (or) of human manufacture."
Tinley Park police received a number of calls beginning late Friday night. Orland Park police reported three calls about the lights. Police didn't seem to have any answers.
That frustrated a woman who wouldn't give her name.
"They don't seem to care what it is," she said. "I'd like to know what it is — I saw one red light come through the east sky, coming from the south going to the north."
Oct 2, 2005
Lauren FitzPatrick, Chicago Daily Southtown, IL
