My family and another family were having a cookout and enjoying a campfire outside 10-12-2012. After eating, we were sitting around the fire just enjoying each others company and conversation. No drinking or any other kind of mind altering substances were involved. Where I was sitting I had a clear view of the north and northeast section of the sky. While we were talking, I was watching a lot of airplane traffic in the sky on their approach to Chicago so I am very well aware of what is an airplane and what isn't. As the conversation ensued, I looked up again and noticed to the northeast of me an unusually bright light. The light was stationary just as a star would be, but much brighter than any star I have seen. This caught my attention and I just started looking at this light because of its brightness. I was watching it for maybe about two minutes and I stood up to try to get a better look at it and the light started to sway back and forth from left to right. As I was watching it, my friends wife who had been sitting near me asked me what I was looking at and I told her about this like and the motion of the light. She got up and looked and seen it too and also took notice of the swaying motion. About a half minute after she seen it, the object started moving away from us to the east northeast with the light rapidly dimming the farther it got away from us indicating to me that it was moving away very fast. After witnessing this, everyone else started questioning us on what we had seen. We all concluded that we just witnessed a UFO occurence. I looked at my watch and it was about 7:30pm. When I had noticed this light, I can only guess that it may have been approximately 2-3 miles to the east/northeast of us and because of the darkness I could not make out any shape of the object. It was much brighter than any of the airplanes I had seen that night and I only seen what appeared to be one bright light. There were no blinking or pulsating lights and as I said, when I first noticed it, it was not moving at all. It was just there with no movement at all. There was also no sound to heard from this sighting.