Appearance / Description of Object(s)

Object at 400 yards through good binoculars looked like two bright round balls of yellow/orange fire, side by side together but with two distinct centers. Fires were brighter than any headlights, they shone like little suns, but didn't seem to light up the area around them like fires of that size would....size, I would guess, was about 10 feet across from left side of one ball the right side of the other, and about half as high.

Size of Object(s)

At arms length, my closed fist would about cover the object as seen with the naked eye. My guess is that it was about 10 feet across and about 5 feet hight at a distance of about 400 yards.

Description of Area / Surroundings

Wooded very rural area, lake community with development going on. Area is adjacent to Childs State Park and Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area...heavily wooded preserves, no power plants, not military bases, no airports, no towns nearby.

Full Description & Details

As an addendum to the statement above, this happened between the middle and end of January in 1977, can't remember the exact date, but it was during a long spell of very cold and clear, crisp weather. I was employed as a security guard for Wild Acres Lakes, a private lake community in Dingmans Ferry, Pa. I worked nights patroling the sprawling community in a Volkswagen Rabbit. I was 24 years old at the time, having been born 6/16/52. At the time, the developer of the community was clearing swampland in another section of the community, in preparation for building another lake around which to build homes. They would burn the stumps and brush, and at night the piles of stumps glowed brightly in the cleared swamp areas. On this particular night the stumps were burning in the area being cleared, which I observed in my rounds. At sometime early in the morning, around 1 or 2 a.m, I didn't note the exact time, I was driving south on Wild Acres drive toward Lakeside Drive in a wooded area with no homes or new construction, when I saw out my left drivers window what I thought was a pile of stumps and brush burning in the woods on the other side of the small swamp which lies to the left of Wild Acres Drive at that point, between Wild Acres Drive and the Construction Road. Since there had not been any construction or clearing going on in the area on previous nights, I thought this was either new clearing and burning going on, or a forest fire starting up. The area where I saw the fire was across the swamp, which was frozen solid and covered with over a foot of snow, and up a small ridge, which was perhaps 30 to 40 feet in height above the swamp level to the horizon. The ridge on the other side of the swamp was about 400 yards away, so I rolled down my drivers side window and took out my binoculars to have a closer look at the fire. When I focused in on the fire, I noticed that it didn't look like a pile of burning stumps and brush, but rather like two bright yellow/orange glowing round balls of fire, closely side by side so that the lights blended together, but still had two distinct centers. I did not observe any structure or sound or anything else, just the bright light. The light was on the ground, about halfway between the edge of the swamp and the horizon. Although there was no moon, I could clearly make out the horizon because it was a very clear, very cold and very starry night, there was snow cover on the ground, and I was looking towards the east, which in this area always causes a bit of glow in the eastern sky because of the major NY metropolitan area 50 miles to the east. I could also clearly make out the trees of the forested area, and the sky through the trees at the ground horizon line, and the sky above the tops of the trees. I observed the lights on the ground for about a minute or so, not longer, still thinking it was a fire of some kind burning on the ground. At that point, the lights slowly began to rise straight up through the trees, and then above the trees to a height of 10 to 20 feet, where the lights hovered for a moment, perhaps 10 or 15 seconds, (all of which I still observed through good binoculars). Then, still without any discernible noise and without change of shape, color or brightness, the fires suddenly shot off into space at an angle about 10 or 15 degrees to the left of vertical (toward the north, as I was facing east), at a speed I can only describe as in a flash, leaving a trail of yellow/orange light behind, the way you see a trail of light behind a flashlight wand when you wave it quickly. I did not report the sighting at the time, nor did I make an attempt to investigate the ground where I had seen the light. I don't know why I didn't, and I wish now that I had. I don't know what I saw, but it made an impression on me such that I can still recall what I saw like it was yesterday. I had not ever seen anything like it before, and have not seen anything like it since. I was 24 years old then, and I am 53 years old now.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

No, I'm very familiar with how planets and satelites look at night, and bright meteorites as they fall and burn up...I'm familiar also with how airplane landing headlights look at a distance as they're coming toward you, and how they look as planes turn or climb. This wasn't any of those things.

Witness Background

I'm 53 years old, married with 2 daughters ages 13 and 8. I have worked in the insurance industry as an underwriter since 1978. At the time of the sighting in January 1977, I worked as a carpenter, and was working as a security guard at the lake community for the winter. I was second in a high school class of 150, I attended Rutgers University for 1 1/2 years. I was drafted in the US Army in July 1972, was trained as a miltary policeman, I had a top secret security clearance and I served in the Headquarters of the 15th Military Police Brigade in Kaiserslautern, Germany as a clerk in the S3 Plans and Operations area. I was born and raised in the area where I had the sighting and I'm very familiar with the area and terrain.

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I have always kept an open mind towards UFO's....there is more to our universe, I'm sure, than my mind can imagine.....but I am not given to making things up, or seeing things that aren't there because I want to see them. Before the sighting, I knew about UFOs what I had read in national press or heard on TV, I did not and still do not buy and read material about UFO's, although if History Channel has on a show about them, I'll watch to see if anyone else had a similar sighting. There seems to be mostly pretty sensational stuff on the TV.

Other Comments

Here's a link to a mapquest map of the area of sighting. Again, I was on Wild Acres Drive looking east towards Construction Road, across a swamp. http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/?e=9&GetMapDirect=Gme5diw%2ca%3a9u12%3b%40%2459%2dan1r72%26%3dt5%21fr5g67%3a9w%402hzal1%4022%21z82u67%3adzbx%26u2gu%2c2%3a9672%3b%40b20w%24%3a%26%40%2459%2dalu672%26%3dt5%21rtng67%3a%26%4025u6%40l%3b%40zauu%24%3a

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