UFO Description: A man and his nine-year-old daughter and another man and his wife watched a strange formation of bright, bluish-white lights hover and maneuver over an apartment building for over an hour. There was no sound associated with the lights in the sky. One observer used binoculars.

Witness(es): Edwin Wesson and his daughter and Mike Randle and his wife (pseudonyms).

Time and Date: September 2, 2009, at 10:30 PM.

Duration: About one hour and 15 minutes.

Place: Gresham, Oregon.

Weather: Broken clouds at about 9,000 feet at the start of the sighting giving way to a ceiling of about 8,000 feet; visibility 10 miles; wind: 2 to 4 mph from the west; temperature about 70  degrees F.

Case Report: Gresham UFO Lights Display (long download). Investigated by Tom Bowden, State Director of Oregon MUFON.

Brief Narrative

Edwin Wesson and his daughter got out of their car at their apartment building and saw a bright, unusual display of bluish-white lights above a wing of the apartments. They watched as this display continued to hover and maneuver a bit, going behind some trees at one point. After a few minutes of this, Edwin thought of his 8 power binoculars and retrieved them and then looked closer at the lights. He could see more definition in the lights and saw what is in the illustration below. He also was able to distinguish a seemingly spherical object very near the more prominent lights. The outside of the spherical object seemed to be reflecting the smaller lights.

Then some neighbors, Mike Randle and his wife, came by and all four continued to observe and talk about the unusual lights display, now over 15 minutes or so. Mike and his wife then decided to go down to Winco Foods and do a little shopping about four tenths of a mile away. When they came out, the lights were still there and they watched them a little longer.

Back at the apartment building, Edwin and his daughter watched the lights go out of sight below the apartment roofline. They got back into their car and tried to locate the lights again but failed.

Seeing the UFO display from two different viewpoints allows the calculation of a location above the ground and actual distances from the UFO display.  The apartment building location was about 4000 feet from the UFO display and the Winco Foods location was about 3000 feet away.  Also, having the angle above the horizon and the distance away allows the calculation of the altitude of the UFO display, which came out to about 700 to 1500 feet above the ground. See the Oregon MUFON Case Study above for more information.

Edwin Wesson's Drawing of the UFO Display