Three rotating lights over Gillette leave a UFO investigator stumped
A Wyoming woman has repeatedly filmed three lights rotating in a triangular formation over her small town since her family moved there this summer. Her videos have drawn hundreds of thousands of views. The Wyoming director of the civilian UFO group MUFON reviewed them and says he has no explanation for now.
Lights rotating in a triangle
Sommer Chase moved to Gillette, Wyoming, with her family in June. On evening walks, she has repeatedly seen and filmed three lights rotating in a triangular formation in the sky. According to Cowboy State Daily, Chase says the lights move up and down across the sky, don't travel like satellites, and make none of the noise you'd expect from a drone. The videos were shot near Sunflower School, where the family regularly walks. The paper did not give the exact dates of the recordings.
Chase's first video, posted last year, drew more than 200,000 views, and her newer clips have also reached hundreds of thousands.
Not their first sighting
Chase says she saw a similar light as a child on a North Dakota farm. Her husband, Cody Chase, a coal miner, began seeing lights in 2019 in Colstrip, Montana, during night shifts at the mine there. Chase saw them herself in 2022. In Colstrip, the lights typically appeared between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.
Chase has considered that the lights could be secret military or government technology, but she believes non-human beings may be watching major energy sites. She offered no evidence for this.
A MUFON investigator has no explanation
The footage was reviewed by Richard Beckwith, Wyoming state director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a civilian UFO research group. He told the paper he has no explanation at present for what was recorded and that the objects remain unidentified. He added that something unexplained today may still be explained later. He estimates that 5% to 10% of sightings are never explained, and he places Chase's footage in that group.
Military airspace nearby
This isn't the first time strange lights have drawn attention in Gillette. In 2021, the local Gillette News Record looked into another resident's video showing 20 to 30 orange-red lights. The operations director of Northeast Wyoming Regional Airport said at the time that the flickering lights were likely flares. The town sits near the Powder River military training airspace, where military aircraft sometimes drop flares and chaff that can drift toward town.
The Air Force's Powder River Training Complex covers parts of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, and B-1 and B-52 bombers train there. The sources don't say whether there was any military flying in the area when Chase made her recordings.
The sober take
What is established: there are videos of three lights moving in a triangular formation over Gillette, and MUFON's Wyoming director currently has no explanation for them.
What is not proven:
- The videos don't show the lights' distance, size or altitude, so their speed can't be determined either.
- The exact dates and times of the recordings aren't known, so they can't be checked against flight data or military exercises.
- The report includes no other witnesses or footage from another location.
- A civilian investigator finding no explanation doesn't mean there isn't one.
Possible everyday explanations:
- Military aircraft or flares: a known occurrence in the area because of the nearby training airspace.
- Aircraft or drone lights: Chase rules this out, but at a distance, the lack of sound doesn't settle the question.
- A triangle that stays fixed while rotating could point to a single object or to devices flying in formation.
What would help: the exact time and direction of the recordings, and simultaneous footage from more than one location.