ANAHOLA — An east Kaua‘i couple is wondering what was lighting up the late night sky last week. Sondra and Michael Grace, a Native Hawaiian couple that run a B&B guesthouse on Hawaiian Home Lands fronting Anahola Bay, reported seeing
ANAHOLA — An east Kaua‘i couple is wondering what was lighting up the late night sky last week.
Sondra and Michael Grace, a Native Hawaiian couple that run a B&B guesthouse on Hawaiian Home Lands fronting Anahola Bay, reported seeing lights early Friday morning of the likes they have never seen before.
Sondra thought it was in the general area of the communication towers for Civil Defense, but she said Mike thought it was higher and farther out.
“I don’t know what it was but it was very big,” Sondra said.
Sondra said that the two were in bed just past 2 a.m. when they noticed the bright lights “falling from the sky” between Anahola and Kealia. The couple live on the ‘Aliomanu side near the river mouth.
“It was high in the sky beyond the light house,” she said. She noted it was moving in circles, she thought, in the vicinity of a Civil Defense communications tower. However, she said her husband thought the lights were much farther out and its size and intensity made it seem closer.
“This is the first I heard of these lights and we are at a loss to explain them,” said Mark Marshall, the emergency management officer for the Kaua‘i Civil Defense Agency.
Michael said they first noticed the lights at about 2:15 a.m. and that it was a half hour to 45 minutes before they disappeared. He said they were very bright, blinking lights that were “hanging” high above the tree line.
The couple thought it might have been people shooting off leftover fireworks or a flare, but they said it just didn’t have the same look. They thought light may be from the airport towers but said they have not been that bright at night before.
“At first I thought it was lightning and it kept flashing and then went straight across about 500 feet, and then there was another one,” Michael said.
“I have been here 20 to 30 years and have never seen anything like that,” he added. “I figured that the military was working on something.”
The couple said that it was cloudy and that the lights were below the clouds and that they could not see anything else but the lights. There was no sound and so they dismissed the idea that it was an airplane or a helicopter.
“The way it was blinking I thought it was an S.O.S. message,” said Michael. “When there were two I thought it was like they were talking to each other.”
“It was way above the light house and it doesn’t flash like that,” said Michael. “It was so high in the sky that everybody could have seen them.”
The Graces’ are also involved in the Hawaiian Independence Movement and are members of the Hawai‘i Constitutional Convention.
This is not the first time that The Garden Island has received reports of sightings of unknown things by residents. In 2002, there were at least three separate reports around the island of unusual lights. In 2009, Wailua residents reported a “flaming green” fireball-like object streak across the eastern sky.
