UFO TYPE: A single, white, glowing object that made a large circular path rapidly and repeatedly in the sky.
SIGHTING DURATION: The phenomenon was seen at a couple of different locations during at least 20 minutes in the second sighting.
DATE: First one: October or November 2011; second one: 2/6/15.
TIME: First one: about 7 PM; second one: about 7 PM also.
PLACE: Salem, Oregon.
WITNESS: Charlotte King.
Here is Charlotte's emailed account augmented by our phone conversation.
First sighting:
After the [first] investigation [you did[ [Case Report: Salem Maneuvering Orb-like UFOs], I continued to watch for unusual things. I saw something just before my mom passed in 2011. I was leaving her home I believe it was October or November [2011] and looked up in the sky. It was about 7 PM on what I believe was a Friday, not sure on that one. I saw what appeared to be search lights moving, which in itself is not unusual, but these lights were above the clouds and moving in a fast pattern. The pattern was large and there was no sound. I continued to watch them driving home on NE Cordon Road, and once I arrived home, I did not see them anymore. [It is] approximately 6 miles from my Mom's house to mine, straight down NE Cordon Road.
The next day I called the airport and did not get [any information that would explain the mystery] so I went online to see if any of the car lots, etc., had been celebrating a grand opening. etc. Nothing jumped out on that [explanation] so on the following Monday, I contacted the [Salem] company that rents the large search lights to see if anyone in Salem had been using them on Friday and they said "no." So I called the National Guard, the attachment at the Salem airport. I spoke to someone and asked if they had been up Friday night and they said just a minute and a man came to the phone, (sorry I did not write down his name), and he said he lived off NE Cordon Road and he had seen the same thing I did and he had no idea what it was, but it was not a helicopter.
Second sighting:
[On] Friday, February 6, 2015, I was on Lancaster Drive, heading north. I needed to stop at the Kaiser Permanente office on Lancaster. It was just prior to 7 PM. I looked out of my car window and saw what looked like search lights. I went into the office and according to the receipt I have [from my purchase], it was time stamped at 7:17, so the object was visible for at least 22 minutes. When I came out of the Kaiser office, the lights were still clearly visible. They were in the exact same place as they were before [in my previous sighting of 2011]: two miles between my mom's house and the Kaiser office. I made a note of the direction. They were due west. The thing that bothers me about these sightings, which could be search lights, is there is no sign of a beam going up into the sky like search lights do. The cloud cover was dense and the ceiling was low.
As I watched the clouds, I could clearly see the lights moving in a circular pattern, going round and round [about one revolution per second]. That is how fast they were making a complete revolution or circle. The circle was approximately the size of a football field. [Charlotte and I talked about this. I explained the concept of angular size and Charlotte believes now that the angular size of what she saw was about what your fist would cover when held at arm's length in front of you. We cannot know the real size of an unknown, unidentified object in the sky when it not very near something that we do know the real size of.]
Even if it were a helicopter, which I do not believe it was, their search lights [attached to the front of helicopters] can't spread out in a circle that large... and again, no sound. What the lights looked like was a bright blue white light, but it was above the clouds so it's hard to say what it might have looked like. If it was a helicopter, like a police helicopter -- I used to see them in Sacramento frequently -- if they were above the clouds and shining their beam down, it should have pierced the clouds and something should have shown through.
I had taken my camera out of the car that morning. I am going to keep one in the car at all times from now on! [I will not be without my camera again!] This will not happen again.
I was speaking to a friend about [what I saw] and she said that she had seen what she thought were search lights a couple of days before, and she thought they might be from Keizer Station, a large shopping mall north of Salem. She might have seen something, but these were due west and the northern direction would not have fit this pattern. Plus I have seen lots of search lights and they do not move in a circle that fast. They sweep and do not rotate. I have not called the search light rental place yet [this time] but will try to reach them on Monday.
The thing that intrigues me most is [that] this is exactly what I had seen before: about the same time of year in winter with low ceiling, dense clouds, and about the same speed [of revolution], and staying in the same place for such a long time period.
When I arrived home, just like last time, they were not visible and it had begun to rain.
Anyway if you have any ideas, please let me know. I will be happy to [attribute] this sighting to something else, but I need to know what.
If you can shed any light on Charlotte's sightings, please contact Oregon MUFON.
