"Mysterious" Lights Recorded over West Bend, Wisconsin

A still image from the video taken by Kimberly and posted by Hypocenter 101. *(Hypocenter 101 / YouTube)*

A set of lights seen over West Bend, Wisconsin, earlier this month have some people wondering if they might be paranormal in nature, while others say they are nothing more than ground lights reflecting off of cloud cover.

The lights first gained widespread attention after a video of them was posted to Hypocenter 101, a YouTube channel run by UFO investigators Brittany Barbieri and Ben Hansen.

In the video, several lights can be seen moving fluidly through the sky in a seemingly random pattern.

According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the video was reportedly shot at around 10:45 p.m. on December 1st by a woman named Kimberly [last name withheld by request] who was driving east with her husband on Wallace Road in West Bend after having just passed the Wallace Lake Supper Club.

It is unclear where the couple had dinner, although it is worth noting that the Wallace Lake Supper Club closes at 9 p.m.

Historical weather data shows that there was significant cloud cover that night.

The area where the couple’s sighting took place is largely rural with little light pollution.

At first, the couple thought that something resembling a white owl had come out of the treetops to their right and swooped in front of their vehicle before disappearing into the trees on their left.

"We've seen them before," Kimberly said of the purported owl. "We've seen them pick up possum in front of our vehicle. So, this was like nothing new. They're just so bright white."

However, once the phenomenon repeated, they noticed what they were seeing was no normal animal.

"Now, we're just like beyond what the heck is going on," she said. "We're starting to look out our windshield. What is flying in front of our headlights over and over and over and over? It was different patterns, doing different things, and kind of swirling around where you see them and just moving around the sky,"

The couple pulled over to record a video, and after several minutes, the "playful" lights were gone.

"It was entertaining to watch," Kimberly said. "But it was hard to wrap your mind around what you were seeing."

Kimberly said that, since her dad was an Army helicopter pilot, she has been a sky watcher all her life, but the lights were like nothing she's seen before.

"I've never seen anything like it before," she said. "It's definitely either something from outer space or some secret military thing."

Kimberly and her husband weren’t the only people to see lights they couldn’t explain this month.

Chris Nowak, along with his wife and two young children, were on their way to Candy Cane Lane in West Allis at approximately 6:40 p.m. on December 2nd when they saw what he described as “a line of light that would basically pulse through the sky incredibly quickly.”

The family was driving northbound on Interstate 43 at the time of their sighting.

At first, Nowak noticed a blueish/purple hue to the sky, followed about 10 seconds later by a white light emanating from within it. Seconds after that, the light flew forward through the clouds and separated into three points.

He struggled to explain the light, saying there was "no rhyme or reason" for the way it moved.

The light would reportedly travel from one horizon to the other, moving from southwest to northeast, and sometimes returning in the opposite direction.

"It didn't have any sort of like a rhythmic cycle to it or anything like that," Nowak said.

As the family watched, the light would reemerge through the clouds and shoot across the sky over and over about every five to 30 seconds throughout their 20-mile drive.

"We continued to see this pulsing, racing [light] going through the sky the entire time," Nowak said.

Nowak exited the interstate and pulled into a Greenfield church's parking lot to record a video.

"It kind of reminded me almost of like if you see an air performance, like the Blue Angels," he said. "And they do a maneuver where they come toward you as a single unit and flank out. That's how I would describe this light. It was just incredibly erratic. I couldn't imagine what this could be. It was different behavior from what we saw when we were driving."

The light seemed to fly "so incredibly quickly," Nowak said, going from east to west and north to south, but would always gravitate back towards the hue.

Nowak explained that he has seen Starlink satellites, meteors, spotlights, and light shows before, but this didn't look like any of those to him.

"This looked completely different," he said.

Nowak started a private Facebook group to look for an explanation for his experience, asking others to share their own experiences and any corresponding videos.

The group has ballooned from several dozen members to almost 600, although many of those are people curious to see the videos for themselves.

"We just want to know what we and others saw," Nowak said. "To me, it's just incredibly perplexing."

Reactions to the lights within the UFO community have been mixed, with noted skeptic Mick West positing that perhaps they were part of Christmas displays in the area, while other investigators, such as Brittany Barbieri and Ben Hansen, insist they remain unexplained.

Speculative explanations include the Enchantment in the Park light display in West Bend’s Regner Park and Flander’s Family Christmas Light Show in Belgium, although there are dozens of such light displays in the greater Milwaukee area that could potentially be responsible for the sightings.

It should be noted that Kimberly and her husband would have been driving in the direction of Enchantment in the Park during their sighting, which is just over two miles east of the Wallace Lake Supper Club, although the display closes at 9 p.m. — well before they claimed to have had their sighting.

Barbieri said that she and Hansen have received over a dozen reports of similar sightings out of Wisconsin, mostly from the beginning of December, including sightings in Fredonia, Howard, and the Green Bay area.

An additional sighting was also reported in Brighton Michigan, she said.

"It's really important that we look at everything and look at all the plausible and possible explanations before pointing to a UFO directly," Barbieri said. "We are not saying this is an alien invasion or any UFOs at all. We're just trying to find the culprit that's producing these lights."

Barbieri and Hansen say that they are now attempting to determine a source of light that could project the type of light seen in the videos while spanning the distances reported.

Nothing is being ruled out at this point, Barbieri said.

She added that, in her opinion, the lights project much like a sky tracker aerial searchlight, except for a couple of "weird tweaks."

Barbieri said that they've presented the available evidence to manufacturers who work with such lights, as well as working with witnesses, and reaching out to local town halls, police departments, fire departments and the West Bend Airport in an attempt to solve the mystery.

"You have to investigate it almost like a crime scene," she said. "You have to really look at every piece of the puzzle before giving an objection of your opinion. The biggest thing is sticking together, being there for each other and trying to help find the source. At the end of the day, if we never find a source, it was just about the community and coming together to help each other. I think that's what it's all about."

West, however, finds their insistence that the lights remain a mystery at all to be suspect.

“Obviously [these are] human-made ground-based lights. It IS enough to say it must be spotlights, because that's exactly what it looks like," he said of the video shared by Hansen on Twitter. "[...] It's obvious that they are ground based directional lights. You'll probably find them eventually. But these are not [unidentified aerial phenomena] of any real interest. [They are someone] shining lights upwards. [...] It's a molehill."

A molehill which, presumably, West believes those with a vested interest in presenting UFO evidence as otherworldly have been quick to make into a mountain.

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