Steve Quayle News Alerts

Dec. 4, 2003
By Chris Brennaman
The Brunswick News

The lights begin to appear in the sky over Hortense after dark as stars make their appearances.

At first glance, they look like any other stars in the galaxy.

That initial image soon changes, however. Suddenly, objects that looked like stars begin to pulsate in four distinct colors: red, blue, yellow and green.

Ron Carter first spotted them on Nov. 13, and has watched them in the sky above his home every night since.

"At first I didn't think anything of it," said Carter, who lives in Hortense and works at a bank in Glynn County.

"I was cutting the garage light off when I saw the red, blue, yellow and green lights flickering. I thought it was the size of a small plane. Then the lights went out and came back on about 100 yards to the east."

There's no sequence or pattern and the lights are brilliant enough to see with the naked eye. Sometimes, the objects are stationary, disappearing as fast as they appear. Other times, they make sporadic movements across the sky.

When Carter called his neighbors out to see the strange phenomenon the next night, they had the same reaction.

Reggie O'Berry said he's lived in the area most of his life and has never seen anything like it.

"I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at first," he said. "But it wasn't a trick. It was a normal night sky. We looked at some of them through Ron's telescope. One was boomerang shaped and another was a round, sphere shape. And they were moving."

While the men don't know exactly what they've been seeing, they're avoiding using the UFO label.

"We're not saying that's what they are," said David Ayers, another neighbor who has seen the lights. "We've just seen some colored lights in the sky that we can't explain. They don't move or look like planes or meteorites. I just want to know what they are."

So far, there are no explanations to explain everything.

Benjamin Zellner, an astronomy professor at Georgia Southern University, said strange light patterns from stars can often be attributed to dust and ice in the atmosphere. The former NASA employee said a prism effect is often seen from stars near the horizon.

"Stars can do strange things given the right conditions," Zellner said. "I don't think people realize that."

Becky Lowder, who runs Georgia Southern University's planetarium, said some of the anomalies could be attributed to a brilliant winter sky.

"This time of year, we have a lot of what we call first magnitude stars," she said. "These are big stars that come into view during the winter months. Stars like Capella in the Auriga constellation and Aldebaran in Taurus will flash different colors as they come close to the horizon and as the Earth rotates."

However, neither Zellner or Mrs. Lowder could attribute the objects' sporadic movements to stars or say why they have appeared consistently since mid-November.

They are most visible from 9:30 to 10:30 p.m. in the eastern sky.

The Hortense residents aren't the only ones who are seeing the lights. A man reported having witnessed a similar occurrence above his home near Augusta earlier this week.

Also, according to the Mutual UFO Network, a nationwide non-profit research group, identical reports are being filed from areas up and down the East Coast about pulsating red, blue and green lights in the night sky.

"There's something [happening] on the Eastern Seaboard," said Tom Sheets, state director of MUFON, Georgia. "What it is I don't know."

Sheets said most of the incidents that come across his desk can be attributed to the mundane. Historically, experimental aircraft are the cause of mistaken identity the most.

"There are a lot of things we don't know exist up there," Sheets said. "But the incidents in Hortense seem to be more widespread. It's not relegated to just one place. That's the kind of case worth looking into.

"Since this doesn't appear to be an isolated event, we may be filing this under 'the unknown.'"

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