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In the early evening of November 7, 1978 - election day - my twelve year old son and I hopped into my pick-up truck and went "shining" deer (it was just before deer hunting season in Wisconsin) on one of the rural roads in our area. There was a clear moonlit sky and snow on the ground, so it wasn't murky dark out at all. As we crested the top of a knoll, my son hollered for me to stop. He was shining out to our right, east, and had spotted deer in an adjacent field. I stopped the truck and watched a bit, but got distracted by a light off to our northwest and about a quarter mile away. At first I thought it was a yardlight near a farmhouse. Then I noticed the real yardlight and the houselights.

The light that had caught my attention looked almost like a flame in the sky, directly above the farmhouse. Puzzled the hell out of me. My son kept watching his deer, so I grabbed the binoculars and looked through them at the strange light. Couldn't make out anything else. I could see lights at a nearby farmhouse a little ways ahead of us and a little to our right. Everything looked normal there. I shut the truck and headlights off and kept watching the light over the far farmhouse. It was about 4-5 house heights above and seemingly directly over the house. I rolled down my window and listened, but heard not a sound. I watched for several minutes.

Suddenly the light went out. A moment later a spotlight began shining down from that spot in the sky. It was being played slowly around and around in the fields near the farmhouse, as if in search of something. Almost like my son and me, but from a stationary spot just above the house. I figured if you were in the house you'd be able to see the light playing across the fields but would be unable to see the source. I asked my son to take a look and tell me what he thought. He was just as puzzled as I was.

I told him to shut off our shining light and we'd drive over to the far farm for a closer look. He shut off the light and I started the pick-up and turned on my headlights. That seemed to elicit a response from whatever was above the farmhouse. The searchlight went out and all went dark. As I slowly eased down the road and around the sharp left at the turn-off to the nearby farm, I saw a light from the mystery area heading our way. I stopped, a little confused and nervous. We then watched in amazement as the light came closer.

It was two lights. Two headlights shining straight out ahead of some sort of small craft, with no wings nor propellers nor rotors nor gasbag. It had no obvious means of being up where it was. My first thought was, "What is a snowmobile doing up there?" But it was a little bigger than a snowmobile, yet smaller than a full-size car. It was maybe 6 feet wide and 10-12 feet long and 3-4 feet high. It had red, green, and white running lights, but it was shaped more like a boat than any aircraft I have ever seen. It definitely looked too cramped to hold a sitting adult human, although there would be sufficient space for a person if he were lying down. We could see the underside quite clearly and could see no wheels, just what may have been skids.

It was traveling slowly in a straight line just above the treetops and passed between us and the nearby farmhouse, which was about a hundred or so feet away. It was moving at about 15-20 mph. As it got close to us we could hear what sounded like the low throbbing of a turbine engine, but what the engine was doing I have not a clue. Whatever the engine was, it must have been the source of the craft's levitation and propulsion. It was like nothing I have seen or read about before or since. Not a saucer, but a boat-like craft with headlights like a car and with no visible means of flight or maneuvering. And too small for humans to be at all comfortable. I just craned my head around and watched as it kinda ambled in a straight and level line till it was out of sight.

At the time, my son said he should have lit it up with our 200,000 candlepower shining light (an aircraft landing light I had rigged to our battery), but I'm damn glad he didn't. Woulda lit that thing up bigtime, and drawn attention to us bigtime. No thanks. There had been a recent article in the paper about an Australian guy disappearing just after reporting a light pacing his small airplane on an evening flight near the coast of Australia. I thought of that and also conjectured that the craft occupants might have been searching for cattle. There had also been an outbreak of the mysterious cattle mutilations reported in the news.

Suffice it to say I wanted no part of whatever was behind this strange craft. I'm certain it wasn't anything human. My son and I hustled back to town and told my wife, then I went over to my folks' house and told them. My wife was skeptical but urged me to contact the county sheriff's department. My mother was openminded but my dad was downright insulting with his remarks. I decided there was nothing the sheriff's department could do, and I needed no more of being scoffed at. Don't care so much about the scoffing, anymore. Just want to put the incident down in writing to leave it for others to think about. Maybe somewhere, somebody has seen something similar and will be reassured he is not alone.