I live in a rural area where the night skies are dark and the stares are bright. at approximately 8:00pm i stepped outside my home with a cup of coffee to have a cigarette. while standing on the deck outside the rear door of my home i noticed in my peripheral vision a very bright white light at about 85 degrees se of my location. i then looked directly at the light and could not distinguish an object from which the light was emanating, but it appeared to be moving toward the south east. no other lights were visible at this time and no sound was emanating from the object. the object did not appear to be projecting the light to the ground such as a search light would have been. the bright light faded out after a few seconds and only a single dim white light was luminating from where the bright light was previously. although i could not see the shape of the object and judging from conventional aircraft i have observed in the sky the object appeared to be at an elevation of about 30,000+ft. the object then appeared to be moving slowly while constantly changing direction. not abrupt right angle changes, but very sharp right and left semicircular directional changes as it moved slowly further away to the south east. as the object moved slowly away the dim white light grew fainter and eventually out of sight. i have observed other aircraft, (helicopters) operating in the night sky using search lights and this object at its estimated elevation did not resemble the same characteristics of those craft. changes in direction also appeared to have been too abrupt for the object to have been a winged aircraft. because of the short duration of the sighting i had little time to collect any visual documentation.