Many evenings i go for a 2.5 to 3 mile walk for exercise in or near my home town of manti, utah. on the evening in question, about 9:30 pm, i was walking in a southwesterly direction on the old highway road, about 1/2 mile south of the populated part of manti. i was approaching an old but inhabited farmhouse in the vicinity. the old highway road at that position runs in a sw direction to the west of, and roughly parallel with us highway 89. (see attached annotated maps.) the old farmhouse that i was approaching is located between us 89 and the old highway. about 3/4 miles or so to the south of the old farmhouse the old highway joins up with us 89. on the night in question, i walked along the old highway road (starting form my home in town) until less than about a quarter mile from where it joins up with us 89. at that point, i turned around and returned home by the same route. it was a very dark night, with no moon, with the stars very brilliant in a clear sky with no clouds that i could tell. it was also very cold, and i had a warm coat on with a hat covering my ears. i could see the constellation orion very brightly in the east not too far above the horizon, and the two stars at the end of the big dipper which line up with the north star were just to the east of a northerly direction. as i was walking to the southwest away from the town, the lights from the town and the nearby sheriff’s building provided less and less light to see the road. occasional headlights from passing vehicles on nearby us 89 at times lit up the road i was walking on, and also at times were a bit blinding. walking near the old farmhouse was easier to see the road, as there was a bright light on a pole illuminating the area immediately to the south of the old farmhouse. when i was at the further parts south from town during my walk, with the farmhouse light no longer visible, the road at times was very difficult to see in the darkness, and often i had to navigate the center of the road by feeling with my feet the sloping of the surface away from the crown of the center part of the paving of the road. the starlight, however, did provide a faint outline of the edges of the road if i looked hard. as i was approaching the farmhouse (about 400 yards or so away), at the initial sighting point, i noticed some unusual lights up in the sky to my left or towards the east or southeast, and clearly above the closer foothills of the high mountains to the east of our valley. it took a moment or two of mental processing to realize what i was seeing was not like the usual sights i have seen so often in the night sky. when i first saw them is when they were closest, and the long string of these lights initially and impressively filled the sky or my field of vision, until the mass of lights grew smaller as they moved towards the southwest. i am very familiar with aircraft, aircraft lighting, red rotating beacons, white aircraft flashing strobe lights, etc. i used to fly in the air force (i am now a retired officer from the air force), and i am presently building a light aircraft. while many of the features of these lights that i was then seeing in the sky above to my left were similar to some features of aircraft lighting, the overall presentation was very unusual, and not at all like is so typically seen in the sky. there were from 25 to 30 points of light, apparently separate from each other, following each other in single file, as they moved towards the southwest. i tried to count them, but it was difficult to get an accurate count. they were not in a perfect straight line as if they were all attached to some very long, straight pole, as there was some vertical alignment variation (but not much) from light to light from an absolutely straight line, but still in a very organized single file. what was singular and unusual was that their spacing one after the other was very uniform. in my personal air force flying experience, when aircraft fly in formation, one is not just behind another, but somewhat to the side of the lead aircraft. these did not appear to be following any such formation, nor was it an “echelon” formation, with the aircraft behind slightly below the aircraft in front. the problem with aircraft flying directly behind each other, is that the plane behind is subject more to turbulence from the prop, jet engine(s), or the wings of an aircraft immediately in front. so aircraft formation flights are not single file. the closeness of one “craft” to the one in front in the formation i saw seemed to present a danger of a wash or turbulence from the craft in front for normal aircraft. i could see no silhouette of whatever shape these craft might have had—only lights. i tried to estimate the height and distance of these objects in the sky. the “crispness” or clarity of the lights for me made them far closer than when i see, for example, an airliner above 30,000 feet, which we see every night around here. because of my interest in aviation, i sometimes calculate the height and speed of general aviation aircraft i see locally during the day, based on the apparent wingspan of the aircraft against the thickness of my thumb at arms length. (i also have a degree in engineering) based on what i have observed and calculated seeing general aviation aircraft locally, these lights seemed to be at a height of from 2,500 to 5,000 feet above the ground here, which would make the msl altitude to be from 8,000 to 11,500 feet. the altitude where i saw these lights is very close to 5,500 feet msl. i could not tell if the path followed by these lights prior to when i first saw them came along and above the closer foothills of our eastern mountain range, or if their path brought them over the eastern mountain range of our valley. the eastern mountain range to our valley tops out most places around 10,000 to 10,500 feet, and perhaps a tad higher in only a few places. based on this kind of altitude, i would estimate their speed to be between 120 and 180 mph. they did not apparently vary in speed, and their single file formation was unchanging from when i first saw this flight of craft or lights until they disappeared without changing direction at all to the southwest. i could be mistaken in my altitude and speed estimates, especially as i had no wingspan to measure against the thickness of my thumb at arm’s length, but that is how it seemed, based on the apparent closeness of the lights and their clarity, and my previous estimates of light aircraft in the area. stated another way, these lights seemed to have about the same apparent velocity or angular velocity as do the airliners above 30,000 feet, or perhaps a bit more apparent velocity, but not much. clearly they were much closer than airliners at altitude. more on the lights themselves. each of the lights had a red pulsating light feature, virtually the same as what i know many civilian and military aircraft have, like a rotating beacon. there were some flashing white lights, basically the same as the white flashing strobe lights that aircraft have at night. but not every craft or light had the flashing white or “strobe” lights. it seemed that only about one in every five or so craft (evenly spaced in the formation) had the flashing white “strobe” lights. but they all had a pulsating red light. this was pretty consistent throughout the entire formation. this, while unusual in practice, still seems like a large formation of military or civilian aircraft. however, there were two other features that did not seem normal. first of all, there were no position lights at all that i could see—green on the right wingtip, red on the left, and white on the tail. even the airliners above 30,000 feet have position lights that i can see on a clear night, and the night of december 9 here was very clear. but these had no position lights at all that i could see. secondly, these craft were totally and utterly silent. i stopped walking two or three times when no trucks or automobiles were near, took off my hat, and tried to listen carefully. no noise at all. no jet noise, no engine noise, no prop or helicopter rotor noise. no noise at all, and with no cars or trucks around, it was otherwise very silent. even the high airliners are audible, though seeing them does precede their jet noise by several seconds. but these lights had no noise associated with them at all, and as stated above, they clearly were much closer than an airliner. as i continued my walk to the south, and the formation of lights finally disappeared in the distance in the southwest, i then noticed a second formation of the exact same lights, with all the same features and descriptive elements, following the exact same path the first had taken, until they finally disappeared in the distance in the same location. the only difference is when i counted the lights in the second formation, i counted between 12 and 14 total, or about half as many as in the first formation. again, each had a pulsating red light, and every five or so had a flashing white “strobe.” the second formation was identical in all ways to the first, except in size or number. i finally reached my turn around point in my walk as described above after the second formation disappeared. i didn’t see any more of the same lights, but i did see a few other lights which were definitely aircraft, virtually all of these others airliners. typical aircraft lights and appearance were not at all like the two formations that i saw that night. the next night i repeated the same identical walk as the previous night, but did not see again any of the unusual lights described above, only that which were clearly normal aircraft. the night and atmospheric conditions the second night were identical to the previous night when i saw the formations. my first impression was that i was seeing a large formation of military helicopters carrying troops on some kind of exercise. but then for several reasons above, this didn’t seem to add up in my mind. we do occasionally have military helicopters fly over our valley in the day, and they make an awful racket. even slightly higher up as i estimate these lights to be (somewhat above the altitude that i have personally seen military helicopters above our valley), i can’t imagine that one wouldn’t hear a military helicopter—especially a large formation of them of one to two dozen. it also occurred to me that these lights might have been objects being towed by a lead aircraft, but in contemplating the formation, it was far, far too long for this to be the case. i have studied the phenomenon of ufos considerably for over 25 years, have read dozens of books on them, and have even written on the subject. i attended one day of a mufon convention once in albuquerque. i have personally met and corresponded with stanton friedman, and personally met and spoken with kevin randle, don schmitt, phil klass, and others. phil klass impressed me very much as being very disingenuous in his debunking work. i sat next to him during the mufon convention, and it was a wonderful experience to witness his methods. i became utterly convinced after having met him and interacted with him for a little while that he knows exactly what he is (or was—god rest his soul) doing. i have followed steven greer’s work closely, and i have taken the critical course on this whole subject in my mind, that while i’d love to know the truth of it all, above all i want to be rational about it, and not jump to unwarranted conclusions, or fall victim to emotion or sensationalism. i have never seen a “ufo” in the classical sense myself, though i have spoken with many people who have. i would tend to think that what i witnessed the other night has a mundane, though unusual explanation, but i would really like to know what these lights might have been. as mentioned above, my first glimpse was quite impressive, as the string of lights occupied pretty much my entire field of view. any help to determine just what i saw the other night would be very welcome. thank you so much.

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