Lights Over Albany?

 The Willamette Valley is a wonderful tourist place to visit, but it seems as if we might have gotten some unexpected tourists last Wednesday when multiple residents of Albany reported seeing up to six mysterious lights in the sky. Pictures and videos were taken of the event, most of which have been posted in the Albany Happenings Facebook group, but as of now the lights remain wholly unidentified.

One such witness was Mark Miner. He said his doorbell rang multiple times around 8 p.m., but after opening the door to nothing, he explored around his property and then went back inside to sleep. Then, around 11 p.m. he was awakened by knocking from his neighbors, who had come to call him outside to see six amber lights in the sky. One was out in front, two were following behind and intersecting with each other, and three were following behind in a straight line.

“In the middle of each of the amber lights, there were two inner white lights rotating slowly,” said Miner.

Once in the Navy, Miner tells us his field of expertis was propulsion systems, yet the lights he observed didn’t seem to belong to a type of aircraft he could recognize. He described the lights as being about a quarter of an inch in the sky at an elevation he guessed was about 15 stories up, or 150 feet. He estimates that they would have been about the size of a car. Miner said that as he watched, the lights  moved towards the Willamette River from somewhere around 7^th or 8^th Street. According to Miner, the first three were moving at around 30 to 40 miles per hour. The last three needed to catch up and moved at what seemed like one to two hundred miles per hour in order to do so. Miner says that when the lights reached the Willamette River they slowed down and came to a complete stop before they switched off. He described the sound he heard – or rather the lack thereof.

“It felt like we were in a cone of silence,” said Miner.

The phenomena was also witnessed by Annaliese Schmidt on 6^th Avenue.

“I saw three vaguely orange lights. They formed in a triangle and hovered maybe a little lower than an airplane would,” Schmidt said.

Having spotted them around 11:30 p.m., she says they moved slowly forward and didn’t break the formation of a triangle while they passed over the houses on the way towards the Willamette River. 

Schmidt estimates the objects in the sky were about 40 to 50 feet long. She said she could hear a vague humming, and watched for about five to ten minutes until they traveled out of sight. As they were going inside, Annaliese’s mother saw a big owl or bird take off from the roof of their house. In an odd coincidence, before Miner went back inside his house he also saw a large white owl that he shined a spotlight on. He estimated the wingspan to around five to six feet.

Oregon’s largest Owl, the Great Grey Owl, has a wingspan that can reach five feet.

When Miner posted his experience on Facebook, several theories emerged. Flares were among the most popular, but Miner thinks that is unlikely as the lights did not descend. Others think they could have been paper lanterns, but they seem unable to account for the motion several observers reported. While floating lanterns are not unheard of around the Winter solstice, they are typically between ten and thirty centimeters; much smaller than the reported size of the objects seen in the Albany sky.

Miner has reported the incident to MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. He hasn’t heard back from them. The next day, two F-15C jets did pass over Corvallis at a low altitude. Officially they were flying low as part of visual flight reference training.

If you also saw the lights and would like to tell your tale, please send an email to editor@corvallisadvocate.com, ATTN Jonah Anderson.