Strange lights still being reported along Interstate 5

There are few reoccurring stories that are on Weird Fresno. But it seems that the stories of strange lights seen on the Interstate 5 corridor between Coalinga and Kettleman City. I had reported in May of 2009 of having received an e-mail from someone stating they saw a UFO here and were able to film it. Upon reviewing it I came to the conclusion it was a crop duster. Well it seems that others are still mistaking crop dusters for UFOs as another similiar report was filed with the National UFO Reporting Center on July 17, 2011. Here is the account as it was reported:

Occurred : 7/17/2011 02:35

Location: Fresno (near; on Interstate 5), CA

Shape: Formation

Duration:1-2 Minutes

A linear object with 3 bright lights, flew about 10 feet over our truck while traveling N on I 5.

While traveling north bound on Interstate 5, approximately 30 miles SE of Fresno, a linear object with three bright lights (Two on the end and one in the middle) approached our truck, containing six passengers. When we first saw it, the linear object was around 500 yards away.

Five of the passengers, including me, saw the formation of lights continuing to fly towards our truck. During this time, the object rotated similar to a plane that has stalled. We were confused and somewhat scared as to what this object is.

It headed straight towards our truck where it flew about 10-20 feet above us. It was close enough to where the driver, and the two front passengers, one of which was me, ducked and screamed.

While continuing to drive, we watched behind us as the three bright lights lifted up and dove into the ground and then back up again. The bright lights spun and rotated until it finally disappeared.

The object was about 30 feet long.

Keep in mind that it wasnt until afterwards we realized that it made absulutely no sound when it passed over our truck.

And the compass on our truck didnt work after the sighting.

Given the description above it sounds similiar to the May 2009 incident. And as I had stated before, I used to live on a farm and we had crop dusted in the past as well as our neighbors. They dust at night as the wind is less prevelant (usually) and whatever is being applied to the crops won't scatter as easily.

But then there's the issue of reporting the craft made no sound. This is just conjecture on my part, but the witness stated they continued to drive and watched the object only noting later that it made no sound. I have to question this as since they were driving in a truck, there would have been enough noise from the tires on the road plus any other traffic to drown out the noise of a single prop engine (which are usually 600 hp or so). I think given the noise pollution and the excitement factor, this is what caused them to miss the engine noise. Now I could be wrong, but given the witness statement and what I know from personal experience (I saw a crop duster, read my post here) I believe that it was just a crop duster and not some sort of alien spacecraft or military aircraft.

One of these nights I want to take a group out to the area armed with some night vision enabled video cameras and attempt to solve this mystery once and for all.

Witness reports seeing two disc shaped craft near Los Banos

In late December of 2002, two witnesses (a mother and her son) were traveling north on Interstate 5 and were near the town of Los Banos. It was late afternoon, about 4:30, and the sun was begining to set. The car was traveling about 40 mph when the mother (who was the driver) noticed two disc shaped craft in the air several miles ahead of her on the east side of the highway.

The witness estimated them to be between 500 and 600 feet off the ground. The witness describes them as fading in and out as she drove closer to them. She sped up to about 60 mph as she got nearer to them, but by this time they were in the early shade of the foot hills as she describes it. As the witness describes it one disc would slowly get brighter and brighter and then they would fade back to the metalic look while the other would would start to get brighter, only to repeat the pattern over and over.

At that point the witness woke her son up who had been sleeping at the time to see if he could see the craft. He replied he did and she asked him to look closer to see if they were somehow tethered to the ground or something. He said they weren't and then went back to sleep, apparently uninterested in what was going on.

As they passed the craft, the witness soon forgot about them and continued driving. It was only until later she remembered about them as she heard someone else's story about a similiar sighting the following day. Unfortunately her son has never remembered the event.

Below is the original report and is unedited and is presented as it was reported to with MUFON. I am not saying that I have any knowledge of what the witness reported seeing and most UFO reports can usually be explained as something natural or manmade. If there is any findings to this case then I will update this report to reflect those.

2 discs hovering next to Highway 5

Close to Christmas in 2002 I and my 21 year old son (who was sleeping in the passenger seat) were traveling north on Highway 5 in California, coming up upon the turn off to Los Banos going west, still @ 40 miles from it. About 4:30 pm, still daylight. The sun was close to setting at that time and we were behind a set of low foot hills about 100-400 feet high on the west of the freeway. When I first spotted the discs a couple of miles ahead of me they were in the sunshine. My mind tried to match what I was seeing with any other known outlines of flying vehicles and they did not match anything I could come up with. I was amazed and curious as to why no one was stopping to look at them.

I spotted 2 discs hovering above the highway on the east side, very close to the road, between 500-600 ft above. After about a minute of viewing them, I realized they were flying discs,as they did not look like any other thing I could recognize. For several miles I watched them taking turns fading in and out, continuing until I was going to drive right under them. By the time I reached them at 65 miles an hour both the roadway and the discs were in the early shade of the foot hills. Higher than that, it was still in sunlight. There was plenty of bright daylight left to see the whole scene. When I say brightening I mean that the whole disc got slowly brighter - not a single light fixture - and then the whole disc faded to the metalic look and the other one then lit up- they did not get too bright to look at - it was like they were on a reostat and it was slowly being turned on to about halfway. They were never really bright as if the sun was hitting them as when I first spotted them but more faded than that. I could not see that they were fading and lighting up until the shadow of the hills covered them. I awakened my son and asked if he saw them - which he did - and told him to look closely as we drove by and see if they were in any way teathered. He had good eyesight and unequivically said no, they were not teathered. He immediately went back to sleep and as soon as we had passed the spot I also completely forgot about them, until much later. The only reason I remembered is because I heard someone elses story about a similar happening to her the next day after I got to my destination. All of a sudden I realized that we had also seen that type of sighting only with 2 discs, one above the other and the lower one was slightly ahead of the other towards the road (but not directly over the road. The two were pretty much strattling each other) My son has never remembered the event.

I don 't know if you want suppositions but I believe the fading in and out was sending out magnetic waves of forgetfulness so people kept right on driving instead of actually stopping along the freeway to gawk.

The early shadow of the foothills just highlighted the brightening and fading of the discs. Not one other car on the freeway even slowed down to look at them.

A case of misidentification

On early Saturday morning, this past weekend, I was driving home from a kareoke birthday party at Tokyo Garden. It was about 2:30 am and I was heading north on Hwy. 99 and took the Ave. 7 off ramp as I always do when I saw a strange light darting about to the north of me. Curious I drove in the direction of the lights. What I saw was three bright lights flying low over a bunch of grapes. The object(s) would swoop down and then dart back up and then disappear only to reappear several minutes later and repeat the process all over again. At this point I had an idea of what was going on, but I wanted to get closer to be sure. As I got within a mile of the craft, I saw it swoop back up and turn off it's lights and at that point I saw the familiar green and red marker lights. I rolled down my windows and heard the engine. Yep, it was a cropduster. I was a bit disappointed and then headed home.

Later that day (i.e. when I woke up), I had recieved an e-mail from a Peter saying he had a very strange encounter last night 2.25am on Highway 99 around the Ave. 9 junction. Realizing he had seen the very same thing I did, I shot him back an e-mail describing what I had seen and asked him if this is what he had seen and then described how it was just a crop duster. He replied back that he thought it was a crop duster but wasn't really sure. This started me wondering how many other people that night might have confused the crop duster for some sort of alien craft or top secret military project buzzing a Madera County farmland at 2:30 in the morning. It reminded me of all the Interstate 5 sightings between Coalinga and Kettleman City that I had reported on in the past. Same type of object seen, three bright lights flying low over the highway then swooping up only to go through the motions again. Most sightings were also during the same time of night (late night or early morning) and most occur during early summer, as was the case of this sighting.

When I had first started investigating these lights I had discounted the crop duster theory. My reasoning was that June was too late to dust for crops and my evidence for this was that we never dusted that late on my family's vineyard. Only by researching on this did I realize that crops were sprayed this late into the year and also spraying for the West Nile virus was done this way. The reasoning for spraying at night as that the chemicals wouldn't evaporate as quickly during the day and therefor less needed to be applied to have the same effect.

Now I'm not saying that all UFO nighttime sightings are crop dusters, but I am wondering how many people who aren't familiar with crop dusting and their night flying techniques may mistake them for UFO's. I'm pretty certain now that most of the sightings over the years on Interstate 5 were crop dusters (well except for that one incident with the strobing red lights) that passerbys mistaken either for an alien space craft with nothing better to do than buzzing cows in the middle of the night or some super secret military aircraft that is making itself not so super secret by revealing itself to the public. Hopefully this opinion piece will help those that may have misidentified plane lights as a UFO, realizing that even the pro's sometimes get it wrong.

UFO follows traffic on I-5 near San Clemente

A California witness traveling south along I-5 near San Clemente at 8:45 p.m. on April 20, 2010, watched a "slender triangle-shaped object" moving above her car, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The witness could not judge the size of the object.

"It was either really high and very large or really low and not that large. If I put my arm all the way out it was the slightly larger than my hand."

She followed the object for 10 minutes before it moved out of view.

She said the lights on the object were light blue and the bottom or belly "of the object appeared to be rounded."

At 9 p.m., the witness had a second strange encounter with odd lights in the sky. This object was about 100 yards above the freeway.

"When I got closer I realized it wasn’t moving and it was only about 100 yards above the freeway. It was a solid white light approximately the size of my thumb at arms length just floating about the freeway. As I drove past it I was able to look out the drivers side window and see nothing attached to it. It was just a single bright floating light."

Click here for the link to the original story as well as the MUFON report.

Could this be similar to what has been seen on Coalinga/Kettleman City portion of Interstate 5? Granted most of the sightings turned out to be crop dusters, but there was still that one incident with the red strobing lights. There must be something about Interstate 5 that UFO's must like.

Interstate 5 Mystery Lights Solved?

About a week ago I received an e-mail from someone in Phoenix regarding the mystery lights that had been appearing on Interstate 5. They had been driving back from San Francisco on I-5 on their way home to Phoenix. According to them, it was around 11:30 pm and they were about 130 miles south of San Francisco when they saw strange lights ahead of them. Luckily they had a video camera with them and were able to record the object as they drove past it on the highway. From all the video’s I have seen taken out on I-5, this is the best one I have seen and may finally determine what some people have been seeing.





In the video you can see three bright lights and as the object turns you can see a fourth, dimmer, one at the end where the tail of an airplane would be. This leads me to believe that this is a crop duster and is probably what most people have seen. I know in a previous post I had discounted the notion of a crop duster but I did some research and found out that most dusting is done at night so that the chemicals sprayed won’t evaporate as much as they would if sprayed during the day. Also, some spraying of mosquitoes for West Nile virus is also done at night for the same reason.

I’m not closing the case on these sightings just yet. There is still the question of what this video shows. Still I’d like to go out there sometime soon and hopefully see a crop duster and get it on film, verifying it for a fact as man made. Knowing my luck, I’ll video something different and will only raise more questions.

More Strange Lights on Interstate 5

I had recently posted a video showing strange lights being seen on the I-5 corridor between Coalinga and Kettleman City. Some new video has come to my attention, this time it was shot about 60 miles north of Bakersfield and once again seen on Interstate 5.

The object that was shot is different than what I previously posted. Instead of three bright white lights, there are several red strobe-like lights that blink in no discernible pattern.

The video below is quite long, you may want to fast forward to 0:46 to see the object. But throughout the video you can hear the concern and fear in the witnesses voices. Note they swear A LOT so be sure you are somewhere where this won't be a problem.

Unfortunately the poster of the video doesn't allow embedding of the video so I did a screen cap and linked the video to the image.

The video is definitely different than the other one. I actually found a site that had interviewed the witnesses in 2007. You can find the discussion here and a link to the report here for those who interested.

One of the posters theorized that the lights were from F-18's since Lemoore Naval Air Station is near by. I have to disagree with this. A friend of mine used to live under the flight path for the Fresno Air National Guard and I would see them fly over at night. Now granted they fly F-16's, but all military jets (as well as civil) have a red and green marker light. The object(s) in the video had no marker lights, just the blinking red strobe lights. I doubt this was some sort of black project. If the government was testing a new type of aircraft, why have blinking red lights advertising its location? I’m almost wondering if this was just a hoax, that someone had heard about the other sightings and decided to create their own sighing. Several ultra lights could have flown in formation with a strobe attached. But the witnesses claimed not to hear any engine sound, though the highway traffic may have drowned out such noise.

But it seems like a lot of work by the hoaxers in hopes of someone just happening to video tape it. And I don’t think they witnesses were part of the hoax, they seemed generally frightened. Could this craft be extraterrestrial in origin? And if so, what is, if any, it’s relationship to the lights in the other video? And why so many sightings in low populated area? I’m working on organizing a trip to this area in the summer time. Maybe if we’re lucky some answers can be found.

Interstate 5 Mystery Lights

For several years now mysterious lights have been seen in the night sky along the Interstate 5 corridor from Kettleman City to Los Banos. Witnesses have reported seeing a triangle shaped craft with a light at each point hover over the highway. The craft would fly over an overpass (it has been seen over Manning Ave) making a 90 degree bank as it would then make a steep dive as it crossed over the highway flying roughly 15’ to 20’ above traffic before making another 90 degree bank turn then descend to nearly 2’ above the ground, looking like it was about to land before ascending at nearly a 45 degree angle to start the pattern of flight all over again. Witness report that it would make the same looping pattern until they lost sight of it. They would try to get away from it as quickly as possible, afraid that the craft would crash into them when it buzzed them flying over the highway.

No red, green, or strobe light that is standard on a conventional craft has been seen. Just three bright lights are the only source of illumination from the craft. There are reports of the craft being a thin wedge shape, but this can’t be confirmed. No sound has been heard as well.

What these lights are is not certain. Sightings from as early as 2002 to as recent as August 2005 have been reported. Some speculate it is nothing more then a crop duster which would make sense since the stretch of highway cuts through agricultural land, but one has to wonder about its erratic flight patterns. One would think that the FAA would find out who this rouge pilot is before someone was hurt. But three years later and it is still spooking drivers who happen to drive along the Interstate 5 corridor between the small farm towns of Coalinga and Kettleman City.

This had been a post I had done on a blog years ago. Reason why I am reposting here is that I came across a video on YouTube that was a short clip of the same three lights described above on Interstate 5. Can't be certain, but this looks like the same craft. Judge for yourself.

I'm thinking of making an expedition to Kettleman City this summer and bring some still and video cameras and see if some evidence can be captured. If anyone else is interested let me know. You don't have to believe in UFO's, my goal is to see what is going on and to try to explain it.