I am retired, 68 years old and have been getting up at least once during every night for the last six to eight years to use the bathroom. My routine seems to be one or more trips around midnight to 1 AM, 3 AM or 5 AM to do this, then go to the kitchen for a short drink of water, looking out my window to the east. Therefore, I know what to expect to see out that window, in different weather conditions and time of year. Last night at about 3:30 AM I was amazed and perplexed to see a light (which I assumed was a star at first look) at least the brightness of Venus in summer (much brighter than any stars in that direction - and in the opposite direction of Venus' position), and oddly mis-shaped (like 2 stars of the same size and character overlapping about 40%, perfectly vertically... visualize a number 8 where nearly half of the top circle has fallen into the bottom circle.) While I watched it for nearly 40 minutes before going back to bed, it did not move, but its brightness would periodically dim slightly as if from cloud cover. I moved to several different rooms to hopefully get a better view and then went outside onto my patio for the best possible observation and to attempt to get a few pictures with my cell phone. To make the outdoor trip, I needed to deactivate our alarm system, which woke my wife who also came out to take a look for 5-10 minutes. She confirmed it was quite odd in its brightness, shape and location to be a star, but I must admit that her celestial knowledge baseline is much less than mine. My rational head is thinking it must certainly have been a star, but my gut and my analysis of the observation is that the data doesn't add up. I've never seen anything like it or even similar to it in that direction before. Although there are some clouds tonight (Sep. 16, its past midnight now), as we look into the eastern sky we can see some dim stars and airplanes flying over Lake Michigan along their usual flight paths... but there is no "standout light" in the location or region of sky that could possibly be whatever we saw last night. I took some photos, but they are junk, not worth sending. If desired, I could provide a sketch or more specific details. The sighting was nearly perfectly east of us and appeared to be quite far away in both distance and altitude, that's why I selected Indiana as the location vs Illinois.