Sighting of huge oval object over Idaho and Washington on 2. august 2017

I have come across an interesting sighting that occurred on 2. august 2017 over Idaho and Washington. It is a very peculiar sighting of an enormous oval shaped craft, with flashing lights, making a very deep, thrumming sound. Several witnesses tried to capture the object on video, but due to the difficult light conditions, mostly the sound is captured on the video I was able to find.

This started as a small investigation after a user on reddit made a post about her sighting, and I decided to see what I could find as the witness sounded very sincere, and was rather traumatized by what she witnessed almost two years ago.

When I looked into this, I found that there was indeed more witnesses describing the same thing, and as I had never heard anything about this sighting before I thought it would be good to make a thread about it. Who knows, maybe ATS can dig up some more information?

First sighting - Boise, Idaho

The earliest sighting I found was at approximately 23:30 on 2. august 2017 from near Boise in Idaho. There were two witnesses to this sighting, which was reported to MUFON on the night that it happened:

I live in a midsized house in a rural area in idaho, between boise and idaho city, just a few miles from the boise national forest. i was downstairs microwaving leftovers, and when i began to walk up the stairs to my room, the house began to kind of shake, almost vibrating. when i got upstairs there was an extremely loud sort of humming sound that seemed to pulsate, getting louder and quiter, but still gradually getting overall louder. i entered the upstairs living room and my girlfriend, who seemed very anxious, ask "do you hear that?!". i set my food on the table and looked out the curtains of the bedroom to the road, but saw nothing (the windows were pointing to the north and northeast.) so i headed over to the bathroom window, which points south (i figured that since the sound was seemingly coming from all around, it could be coming from any direction.) i looked at the road to the south and still saw nothing, so i opened the window. when i opened the window i could easily hear the sound of a large fighter jet. i looked up and saw the jet moving quickly in a northeastern direction. i wondered if the jet was following whatever was making the sound, so i went back to the bedroom to look out the northeast window again, this time to the sky instead of the road. i saw several lights in the sky, that appeared to be coming from a single craft. i couldn't make out much of a shape or color, and it was far away, but i could tell it was all one solid craft because it was blocking out the stars, and the moon is very bright tonight so i could see a shadow. it was enormous. i have been studying ufology for 15 years, and have seen ufos before, but never anything this large. it had to be at least a quarter mile to a half mile across. the lights were in a diagonal line, and flashed different colors, mostly blueish and yellow, and they flashed in sequential order, the top one blinked, then the 2nd most top light, and so on. it was headed towards the mountains to the north and descending. i tried to take video with my phone, but could not pick up anything but darkness. i called my girlfriend into the room and simply pointed in the direction, givening no indication as to what i was pointing at. she quickly yelled "what is that?! it's huge!" as it descended beyond the mountains and out of our field of vision the humming slowly stopped. we then saw the jet following in the exact same path. after that we heard many more jets and helicopters following it. it's been about an hour and a half now, and i can still hear jets go by every few minutes.

MUFON Case 85605

Notice that the witness describes that the object moved in a northerly direction.

Second sighting (possibly) - Culdesac, Idaho

The next witness report that I found, describing what is most probably the same object, was from Culdesac, Idaho, which is to the North West of the first sighting. Now, this witness report was made a week after the event, and the time is reported as around 22:30, but if this is the same object going North-West then the timing is off on this sighting. Since this report was made so much later, it might very well be that the witness is wrong about the time, but this is obviously a discrepancy.

The sighting was reported as having occurred at 2. august 2017 at 22:30 (discrepancy with first sighting) and there was only one witness:

First load hum,loader than plane which go over my path.Dull pulsate hum and all in line lighted across sky,low and pulsating off each one and then one below.Lights took turns.This was a large area but spaced.Very slow seed,dark sky but load and hum . after several seconds i went outside because the airport is about 2 mi. off and planes fly over a lot each night.I am use to their sound.But this was very load and scary.The sound was like a train but slow and hummed and dull. i finally went outside because it sounded like it was so huge.The lights were just passing over head and pulsating in a line up.The lights were headed for our airport but this string of lights were several lights which took up the whole horizon.I noticed a plane coming in towards the airport with a red blinking light.I know they must have seen the lights,it would have been terrifying the sound.The lights took turns across the sky each pulsating off and on as the next light came on in alternating in sequence.Then there was a light below the line up(same color),all the lights were white.The lower light joined in the alternating of the others,each taking it's turn.Whatever it was the lights were perfectly spaced in a large line and flying really low and slow.I couldn't believe that our airport didn't put out something.I've never seen anything like it before.We live really remote in canyons and this was coming from the south.

MUFON case 85808

Notice again the similarities with the description, both with regards to the light, and the sound it made. Notice also that the witness reports that the object came from the South moving North. Both witness also report this as an absolutely huge object.

[CONTINUED IN NEXT POST]

Third sighting - Oakesdale, Washington

The third sighting is to the North East of the Culdesac sighting in Oakesdale, Washington and had two witnesses, one who tried to capture the object on video, but mostly managed to capture the sound witch you can hear quite clearly with headphones in the uploaded video I will link below the report.

First witness report:

Object seen around Steptoe Butte. On 08/02/2017, at approximately 1143 pm, I went outside my house to turn my sprinkler off for the night. After I had done so I could hear a very loud hum. I looked to the sky facing southwest and I could see 20 to 25 white lights going in a clockwise motion across the sky. The lights were attached to something very large and were blinking in the clockwise sequence around an object. The area that these lights covered took up most of the horizon. The area around the lights was totally blacked out, you could see no stars or the moon at all. While I watched the object and lights, it did not appear to be moving. If it was moving it appeared to be doing so very slowly. The loud humming sound was definitely coming from the direction of the lights. It was a very odd sound, not like an airplane. The sound was more like a pulsing hum, but very loud. In fact, you could feel the vibration from the sound. After watching the object for a couple of minutes, I ran and got my Dad out of bed so he could see this as well. My dad brought his cell phone with him so we could try to film this. I have uploaded that video to youtube. My dad also was able to witness the object as well. We watched this thing for another minute or two as it began to travel to the Northwest away from us. We were able to see the lights still going in a clockwise sequence around the object until it faded out of our view. The youtube video, which is too dark for me to see anything, is more of an audio clip, if the volume is up you can hear the hum though. Here is the web address for the video, www.youtube.com...

NUFORC report

This is the video the witness shot. You can hear the deep hum the witnesses describe, but you need earphones. The video is completely black.



Second witness report:

The object that we saw was a massive oval that produced a loud thruming noise as it passed.

On the night of 8/02/2017, I went to bed at about 11:00 pm. At about 11:30 pm, my son came knocking at the door saying you need to come out and see this thing.
When I walked out side and went behind our shop I saw a ring of lights that appeared to go around this extremely large dark object, The lights flashed one at a time and went around the object clockwise. What really was amazing was the size, it seemed to take up a third of the western sky.

The other thing that we noticed was the noise it was producing, It sounded like a steady thrum and was vibrating things around us.

It slowly moved of to the west and faded from sight. The sky was fairly dark due to smoke from fire and the light was subdued from the smoke. Stars were visible were the object wasn't but we were awed by the area it occupied.

My son grabbed my cell phone and tried to record it and mainly got the sound. The lights on the object were white.

((NUFORC Note: We spoke via telephone with the witness, and he sounded to us to be quite credible and sincere, as did his son. Please see the similar report regarding a similar sighting a few minutes later near Lincoln, WA, on the Columbia River. PD]

NUFORC report

Notice again the description of both the lights and how the object is huge and makes a deep, thrumming sound. The object is now moving North West according to the two witnesses.

Fourth sighting - Lincoln, Washington

The last sighting is the one that started me looking this case, and was reported as being at 23:55 on the same night 2. august 2017. There were three witnesses.

White flashing lights on one mile long disk hovering and moving above and along the lake.

My Mom lives in Lincoln, WA, sometimes shown as Creston, Wa, on the web. We are about half a mile from a boat launch on Lake Roosevelt.

My mom and I were watching tv at 23:55 or 11:55pm, when my step dad walks inside the house from the porch. He says to my mom, “Come listen to this noise, I have never heard anything like it.”

So my mom goes outside with him on the porch. I do not follow him at first because he was so calm. Then my mom opens the door and frantically calls out to me, “Come out here as fast as you can!”

I run out to the porch and instantly see this long string of lights in the sky, and there is this loud, ominous, deep vibrating sound that I can feel vibrating though my feet on the deck. The only way I would be able to describe this sound would be if there was a giant wine glass with a mile wide rim, and a wet finger continuously rubbing along the rim to make this deep low hum.

The string of lights are white and flashing or pulsating in what appeared to be a sequence running around the perimeter of a disk. We could not see the definite outline of the craft because it was dark and also very smoky from recent fires. But we could tell by the pattern that the lights were moving that it was most likely a disk or ring shape. The craft looked like it was about a mile long, and maybe 1,000 feet above lake Roosevelt.

We first saw the craft to the east, moving very very slowly. Its path appeared to be following the curves of lake Roosevelt, headed north, then north west. We could still hear the hum or vibration from the craft about three or four minutes after it was out of view. I was in such shock that I could not stop crying my eyes out.

My mom tried to calm me down by reminding me that the day before this event, or maybe two days before, the local news station gave a statement from the local air force base, Fairchild Air Force Base, saying that people should expect to see strange aircraft maybe even foreign crafts. But the broadcast was almost in a joking manner.

This changed my mood from scared and sad to scared and mad. If this was indeed secret military aircraft, how dare they mock our fear when we discover their dark secret of bizarre advanced technology.


((NUFORC Note: We spoke via telephone with the young woman who submitted this report, and she sounded to us to be quite eloquent, and quite sincere. Please see other similar reports from Oakesdale, WA. PD))

NUFORC report

Notice again the description of a huge craft with flashing lights around the perimeter making a thrumming, deep noise and moving north north-west.

Flight path
I plotted the four sightings on a map just to see how they line up, and they do line up fairly well describing a sequence of sightings going from South-East roughly North-West. The second Culdesac sighting is obviously out of sequence if the time reported is right, but the sequence of the other sightings are quite consistent with something going North North-West.



Due to the very consistent descriptions, I do think that something very large actually did move over Idaho and Washington on the 2. August in 2017. I definitiely think this is worth noting as a pretty significant sighting of something. What was it? Something millitary

damn, now THIS is the good stuff! this is why i still come to ATS!

no idea what this could possibly be other than "UFO!" but it seems pretty legit.
real good work with the detectoring, too

can i ask which subreddit you found the original story on? i've tried a couple of ufo subs and they all seem pretty lacklustre, i'd love if there was a decent active one to sink my digital teeth into.

a reply to: continuousThunder

I agree that most of the subreddits are pretty lackluster, but you do come across the occasional gem.
The once I usually keep an eye on are UFO, UFOs and Paranormal.
/r/UFO is pretty good, but carries much of the same content as ATS.

There have actually been some pretty interesting posts made on reddit over the years, including an account of the Nimitz encounter several years before it even got any mention anywhere else on the web.

But, as is often the case with this subject, you have to sift though a lot of static to find the interesting ones.

The same goes for NUFORC, which is an absolute treasure throve of information, but very much unfiltered.

And, of course, there is ATS :-)

Cheers,
BT

The exercise that took place around this time seems to have been Mobility Guardian.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AFNS) -- Exercise Mobility Guardian highlighted the close relationship between Mobility and Combat Air Forces, who teamed up to execute approximately 90 sorties together, July 31 to Aug. 12, 2017. The exercise provided the MAF and CAF opportunities to integrate combat capabilities in a dynamic, highly contested environment to help ensure future mission success at both the tactical and strategic level. “Everything that Air Combat Command does, we do on the back of mobility forces,” said Gen. Mike Holmes, the ACC commander. “We’re a global Air Force, and we’re a global Air Force because we can pick up and move wherever we need to and know that we can be there quickly with everything we need to operate. Without (Air Mobility Command), we’d be a regional Air Force.”

Fairchild AFB participated in this exercise:

Fairchild AFB Ready for Mobility Guardian

originally posted by: beetee
Due to the very consistent descriptions, I do think that something very large actually did move over Idaho and Washington on the 2. August in 2017.

Why would you think that? We already know such descriptions are unreliable because they are very similar to the Phoenix lights descriptions of a large object, claims that it blocked out the stars (which it may have appeared to do for physiological reasons) were also made in that case, but there was no large object, it was only a formation of planes creating an illusion of a large object. In the Phoenix area someone even managed to capture the lights in a low quality video but it was good enough to confirm they were planes or at least independent lights not part of one large object.

originally posted by: beetee
The exercise that took place around this time seems to have been Mobility Guardian.

So maybe it was just airplanes in this case too?

Goodyear Blimp, perhaps?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Why would you think that? We already know such descriptions are unreliable because they are very similar to the Phoenix lights descriptions of a large object, claims that it blocked out the stars

I do think something very large moved across at least two states on the night in question, because there was a deep humming sound that followed the lights and made objects shake and surfaces vibrate.

I don't know how large it actually was. I have been pondering if it can have been a fleet of very large transport aircraft moving in a group at night, but you have to admit that such a formation won't normally create the illusion of something blocking out the stars between them.

It would also be rather odd that the lights of these aircraft would flash in a pattern, don't you think? To my knowledge, planes flying in formation do not normally sync their collision warning lights to flash in sequence...

While it is true that there was an exercise featuring large aircraft going on at the time, we should note that this was the only night that these people made reports about seeing something flying overhead, precisely because this was considered odd and were (to them) not consistent with being aircraft.

And how many aircraft flying in formation would it take to create the racket and the light display described by the witnesses?

It seems more than a little odd to me. People normally do not freak out over aircraft flying over head, unless they do something spectacular.

The claim about human observation being so unreliable is a bit weak as all human knowledge is obtained through human observation.

And the Phoenix incident is far from a closed case in my opinion.

a reply to: oldcarpy

I actually wondered if it could have been a blimp too, but not, perhaps, operated by Goodyear...

a reply to: beetee

It's cases like these that make you wonder. Seems to be a fairly consistent reporting of the same object/phenomena.

What kind of Military bases are in the area? I would lean toward a more man made object but the sizes reported make you think otherwise. Similar in size to the Phoenix lights but a different shape.

originally posted by: beetee
a reply to: oldcarpy

I actually wondered if it could have been a blimp too, but not, perhaps, operated by Goodyear...

Would a Blimp be causing such amounts of vibration and humming?

a reply to: pavil

Apart from Fairchild, there is McChord (which was the main base used in the Mobility Guardian). This is an actual video of operations on the day/night in question, but this would have been rather more to the east.



McChord AFB

If you try to project a course for where the object making such a racket came from, you end up in some interesting areas in Utah. Of course, there is no guarantee it flew in a straight line. Nevada is, of course, also due South.



Utah Test and Training Range

originally posted by: pavil

originally posted by: beetee
a reply to: oldcarpy

I actually wondered if it could have been a blimp too, but not, perhaps, operated by Goodyear...

Would a Blimp be causing such amounts of vibration and humming?

When they crank up the engines , yes
Although it is more of a low hum
Has about the same engines as a twin prop aircraft.

From the descriptions , that may well be what it was.

Former Goodyear employee who got to ride the blimp twice.

a reply to: pavil

Would a Blimp be causing such amounts of vibration and humming?

Well, if it was a hypothetical huge blimp, it would still need a form of forward propulsion.
What kind of propulsion is anybody's guess, but the traditional engines are usually propellers for blimps.

I don't quite see this being that, but maybe if there were enough of them or they were large enough. I don't know.
If you listen to the video with earphones you can hear the hum quite clearly as it recedes, although it was (allegedly) much louder earlier in the sighting.

I haven't tried to estimate speed, but I guess an estimate could be done based on the timing of the sightings. It would be rather rough, but may give us a ballpark speed at least.

a reply to: Gothmog

USAF, of course, have had a history with blimps in the past.

Goodyear Military Airship.

Now, this was back in the 1920's, but maybe they are tinkering with blimps yet again?

I don't know if this makes sense, logistically or economically, but it is perhaps a possibility.

It is not as if there has not been a lot of rumors about "Stealth Blimps" in the past, and one thing that is well understood about airships is that they can be made pretty large.

Or maybe this is something else, completely.

a reply to: beetee

I was about to update my post
The only times the Goodyear blimp flies at night are special occasions such as coverage for sporting events
You may be correct . I did read on a tech site where the military was experimenting with some form of blimp . But that was a few years ago.

Regarding the blimp angle, here is an article from a few years ago:

Is There A Future for Airships

Now, for Air Mobility Command, which very well might be the operator here, I am not sure how feasible they would think these concepts are, but as you can tell from the article, some serious military contractors (like Lockheed-Martin) were looking very seriously at this. "Much larger payloads at much lower costs" is one of the quotes from a Skunk Works project leader in the article above. And green. And no need for airports.

Now, does this seem like something Air Mobility Command would be interested in?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Neat thread, but as to

but there was no large object, it was only a formation of planes creating an illusion of a large object.

With all due respect, the eyewitnesses I spoke to back in '97 were pretty certain a solid v-shaped object some kilometers across was involved.... at least over I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson as the people I spoke to were in that strip of territory.

Whatever one video showed does not fully represent a two- hour long, dynamic event witnessed by tens of thousands of people. It didn't help the matter that many conventional aircraft were out as well.

But the people I spoke to seemed quite reliable and their sightings were of a solid, matte black v-shaped craft the better part of a mile across. A few of them saw it with enough light in the sky to see the actual shape and see surface features.

Soooo ... I believe you are in error.

The plotted path is interesting because it appears to stay close to the treeline/away from the open area (of canyons? mountains? fields?). But that could simply be because that's where the towns are, where people who witnessed it live.

thanks for this thread!

I always wonder how people can give size estimates like "easily a half mile long" or like in the Phoenix incident, "the craft was a mile long.". Isn't it pretty difficult to estimate size, because of all the variables of point of observation? How far away the thing is from the observer, and how high it's flying, are just a few of the things to take into consideration. So I always wonder when regular folks give these estimates- did they take all that into account?

Do people know how HUGE a half-mile long craft would be?? That's CRAZY. how do these witnesses get to that conclusion???

Ah man that went right over me, I wish once in my life to see something like that.