Multi-colored "pole," appearing to hang in the sky for several minutes before dissipating slowly, from top to bottom, into darkness.My mother and I were returning home from Iowa after Thanksgiving in 1997, driving in the middle of the night. My mother was driving; I was in the passenger seat, looking out the window, as we drove along the highway through endless farmland, indistinguishable in the black of night. I don't recall if there was a moon out, but as I gazed out the window my attention was suddenly grasped by what appeared to be a lit pole - long, thin, and vertical - hanging in the middle of the air over the field on the right side of the car. I have no idea how far out it was; it was a very dark night. The light of the "pole" was rainbow-colored, blended like a spectrum, and did not appear to light the field around it. It hung there for several moments, doing nothing; then, starting at the top and working its way slowly down, the light dissipated and was replaced by darkness. The minute it started doing this I turned to my mother to ask if she was seeing what I was seeing, only to find her looking out my window with a shocked expression. She said she saw it, too, and we watched it until all of the light had dissipated. I could not make out anything that might be connecting it to the ground, but as I said, it was very dark, so I made it a point to search the same fields on subsequent visits to and from Iowa. Taking the exact same route in the daylight, on several visits, at no time did I see anything that looked like the strange pole we saw that night, nor have I found any reports of anything remotely like it. It has been a constant, haunting presence in the back of my mind ever since. I am a State employee, assisting with investigations for the Department of Human Services; my mother is a former dental technician, now working for a company that assists the developmentally disabled.