Hovering light pattern under cloud cover in otherwise clear night skyI had been up late working on an art project and stepped outside to shake off the clay dust that had accumulated. The flashing light in tthe sky caught my eye, and at first I thought they were spotlights shining up from tbe ground as they do sometimes for movie premiers or grand openings. I thought it was such a foolish thing to do at 3AM. The more I watched the more interested I became. At first I was attracted by the pattern the lights were making, then I realized the lights were not emenating from a completely stationary source, and at about the same time discerned that the beams were not in fact coming up from the ground. I was sure of this as they were shining through the only cloud I could see in the sky. the cloud itself was interesting in that it appeared to have a clear though pitch black center and was itself approximately circular shaped. The lights themselves repeated a pattern; they would efveidently "cluster" (for lack of a better word) around a center slightly forward and to the left of the cloudless center and then would shine or fly outward in four or five different directions, evenly spaced apart, forming a circle. If the spacing of the lights was any indication of an object behind the clouds, the thing would have been huge! The more I observed the more certain I was that the beams of light were not seperate from an object, as individual light objects forming a pattern and flying independently, but were from a fixed point though I couldn't quite track a beam through the clouds. That could be explained as lights shining down from the bottom of something moving along a "track" and going back to a center point. I can't think of an analogy. I bbecame aware tthat the lights were getting closer and that they could actually be coming from something quite low to the ground. I got scared and went inside. But I heard one of my neighbors come home and went out front to the parking lot and pointed the lights out to him. We watched them for a few minutes and he said he had seen them! before, that they were a secret government project "designed to make us look crazy"., mind you he'd been drinking, so I don't know what to make of his comment. I looked up again and the lights had again shifted towards the side of the building that the parking lot is on and seemed to be coming closer. I again went inside. I was scared an excited and ddidn't know what to think. The only thing I could hear when I was outside were crickets, absolutely nothing else until my neighbor's car pulled in. I realized my cats were still outside and stepped out one more time, it was still there and this time started moving closer right away and was almost directly overhead. That really shook me up. I debated calling the police or the news but didn't want to sound like a nut. I was afraid that by the time anyone offical checked it out it would be long gone, it had already been there for at least a half hour. This time I went on my computer and instant mesaged a freind that had come on line and told her what I was seeing. After 15 minutes I decided to look and see if it was still there. It was gone, so was the cloud, and the night was suddenly warm whereas before it been decidely chilly even though the weather forecast had called for a relatively warm night (finally). I seem to recall reading something about ufos creating clouds but couldn't find any descriptions that matched what I saw. Especially the distinctive pattern of lights. They were all white, no other colors. So are there any logical explanations other than a UFO? Are these the nice ones or the meanies? Should I step out and greet them the next time? If there is?((FOLLOW-UP COMMUNICATION FROM SAME SOURCE, SUBMITTED JULY 27, 2002))Previous report and update plus one several years agoI reported the sighting already on 5/28/2002. I wanted to request further information. I really am curious to see if anyone else has reported anything similar to what I saw. I'm not convinced it was a craft but for the fact that the light couldn't have been traveling through the cloud from the ground, I would have seen the light path as it passed through. Secondly the circular clound surrounding the event and the chill as well as the silence and then the sudden disappearance (though I didn't witness it leave) convince me that this was more than just an average light or cloud. If not a UFO what else could it have been? I was being facetious about the alien contact comment. It was late and I was rather ashamed of myself for getting so scared. I've looked through numerous entries on you site and others and haven't found anything quite like it. And though I distinctly remember reading something about UFO's hiding in circular clouds I cannot find anything confirming this. There are numerous UFO sightings in the Tacoma/Lakewood area. One night several years ago my daughter, a ffriend and I saw lights streaking across the sky betweem Tacoma and Puyallup, then they hovered and took off again, we all agreed it could not have been a plane and that was confirmed when we listened to the rradio, numerous people called the station and saw what we saw. Interestingly even though we are near an airforce and army base there were no aircraft in pursuit. We see planes all the time in this area, of all types. This did not appear to be a plane. So though a long time skeptic, I'm becoming a believer. Aliens? I don't know, but I'd love to find out. As long as I knew I was safe that is.