Police: Strange Sightings North of Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Add Las Vegans to those sighting strange unidentified flying objects in the Southwest skies.

Las Vegas Metro Police report ``quite a few calls'' Monday night of people sighting strange lights in the skies northwest of the city, in the direction of the top secret Area 51 base.

A police dispatcher who declined to give her name said she and other family members spotted the mysterious object hovering in the sky about 9:30 p.m. PDT.

A Minuteman missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. at 8:39 p.m. and the missile's vapor cloud was spotted by Las Vegas residents. But the police dispatcher said the lights were spotted northwest of the city, whereas Vandenberg is southwest of Las Vegas.

``It was like a pyramid or V-shaped wedge, with pulsating yellow lights,'' the dispatcher told The Associated Press. ``It split up, then it came back together. ``We got quite a few calls on it. From all reports, it was something similar to what was seen over Phoenix.''

There have been reports out of Phoenix the past week of odd-shaped lights hovering above the city in a boomerang formation earlier this year.

``It wasn't like anything I've ever seen before,'' the dispatcher said.

She said the lights hovered in the sky for about 15 minutes and didn't appear to be moving, then disappeared.

``It looked like they took the lights of a football field and put them way up in sky,'' said the dispatcher's niece, who also requested anonymity. The woman said she has never witnessed such a display in the 37 years she has lived in Las Vegas. She said her husband and their three children witnessed the lights as well.

``They were these huge round lights, like they were in formation,'' she said. ``They were in a wide V-shape and they broke up and disappeared.''

The woman said she and her aunt began driving toward the location of the lights while her husband remained at their home on the southeast side of town.

``Then the lights reappeared in two groups of V's and there were a lot more of them.''

``We thought the lights were pulsating but my husband was looking at them through binoculars and he said they were just a steady stream of bright light,'' the woman said.

She said there were ``well over a dozen lights.''

The lights were in the general direction of Area 51, a top secret base about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the dispatcher said.

Maj. Steve Boylan of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo. said there was no space debris re-entering the atmosphere during that period that might have caused the lights.

Asked if the lights could have been from the Vandenberg launch, Boylan responded ``Lights do funny things, especially at twilight.''

A spokesman at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas was not immediately available for comment.

Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said no tests were being conducted Monday night at the Nevada Test Site, northwest of Las Vegas.

Sharon Singer, a resident of Rachel, Nev., a tiny community near Area 51, said she sighted no lights at the site during the evening.