"It was like a City back there"
A large number of lights seen in a remote Yukon valley
Village of Pelly Crossing
August 22, 2000

by Martin Jasek


It was 11:40 pm and two men were in a vehicle at the intersection of Acorn Road and the Klondike Highway (Figure 1) about 4.5 kilometres northeast of the Village of Pelly Crossing in the Yukon Territory. Since it was overcast it was pitch black outside.

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Figure 1. The UFO sighting took place at the intersection of Acorn Road and the Klondike Highway about 4.5 km northeast of Pelly Crossing, Yukon.

As the men were about to pull onto the highway, directly in front of them they noticed a tremendously long row of white lights. The lights were near ground level and behind the poplar forest on the west side of the highway (NOT in the direction of the nearby airstrip). What astounded the men was that there is nothing back there, no roads, no houses, no development, nothing! Yet there were so many lights "it was like a city back there" one of the men remarked. Each individual light had a strange quality to it, a white solid color, much like that of an energy saver light bulb (Figure 2).

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Figure 2. Illustration of long row of lights seen by the 3 witnesses. Spacing and location based on a witness drawing. Photograph of actual location taken in November.

Having grown up in the area, the men knew that all that was behind these trees was Willow Creek Valley (Figure 3 and 4). They could not believe their eyes, what amazed one of the men was how evenly spaced the lights were. They stepped out of their truck to get a better look. Not a noise was heard. Only a few minutes had elapsed when they did hear something, a rustling in the undergrowth between them and the lights. They were somewhat apprehensive about the lights initially but this noise put the icing on the cake. They jumped back into their vehicle and headed back to Pelly. They knocked on the door of a friend of theirs and asked him to go out to go back to the location with them. Their friend agreed.

Upon their arrival at Acorn Road, to their surprise the lights were still there. The friend of the first two men was equally amazed. They pulled onto the Acorn Road turn-off and swung the vehicle around so they faced the lights. The three men got out of the vehicle. The third man started walking southbound along the highway while the first two men stayed near the vehicle. There seemed to be a higher concentration of lights further to the south and the man wanted a better look.

The man walked about 120 metres to the south of the truck while the other two men stayed with the vehicle. He noted that the further he walked the more it seemed that the lights were further away from him and more closely spaced together, as if they were arranged on a curve. "I was really excited, I wasn't scared, I wanted to see more, I went back towards the truck and headed off into the bush."

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Figure 3. Looking southwest along Klondike Highway and Willow Creek Valley showing the location of the witnesses.
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Figure 4. Willow Creek Valley (also shown in the inset in Figure 3).

The two other men aimed the headlights from the truck so their friend could see his way into the forest. "I went as far as the headlights could shine, there was lots of deadfall and I couldn't see where I was going. My friends were yelling, come back here, come back here, lets go! But I have wanted to see a UFO all my life" said the middle aged man. He took a closer look at the light display and noticed that there were other lights, higher up, in addition to the main row of lights near ground level. The lights were turning on and off as he walked, either on their own or because they were being obscured by branches as he moved.

One of the men near the truck went to the edge of the road and towards the lights to see if he could spot his buddy but noticed that he started to feel an electrical charge on his feet! The two kept yelling at their friend to return. Running through their minds was "what were they supposed to explain to the police if he goes missing?"

Not able to penetrate the bush further, their friend returned to the truck and the three headed back to the village. It was approximately 12:30am on the August 23rd at this time. They estimated that they spent about 15 minutes in the area. When they arrived in Pelly they stopped at the third man's house and picked up his wife. One of the other men retrieved a Polaroid camera and four individuals headed back out to Acorn Road. When they got there, the lights were gone.

At one point in the sighting a tourist in a motorhome drove by and the men tried to flag him down. The motorist didn't stop.

The man who got the electrical feeling on his feet returned to the same spot at approximately the same time for the following two nights. He spotted absolutely nothing behind those threes. He had to see if there was anything that could account for those lights. There wasn't. The sighting had a profound effect on the three individuals.

Investigation
Martin Jasek traveled to the area in November 2000 to interview the witnesses. The witness who walked down the road and back to the vehicle and then into the bush during the sighting was able to accompany him to the location. Figure 5 illustrates the detailed observational data that was obtained from this man. On both occasions the witnesses parked their vehicle at point "A".

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Figure 5. Air photograph of Acorn Road and Willow Creek area showing the witness location and viewing directions. Witnesses parked their vehicle at point "A". The row of lights spanned a large arc of approximately 80 degrees. When one of the witnesses walked to point "B" he noted that the row of lights was curving away from the highway. The geometry above is useful to estimate the size and location of the lights.

The span of lights specified by the witness at this location was very extensive covering some 80 degrees of horizontal arc (shown as red lines in the figure). During the sighting the witness walked southwest bound for about 120 metres along the Klondike highway to point "B". At this point he noticed that the row of lights was curving away from him. The blue line shows the left-hand limit of the lights, as viewed from point "B". The two observations from point "A" and "B" give us a rough idea of the dimensions of the lights. A key point in this geometry is the intersection of the lines from "A" and "B". This point gives us a fixed location and tangent of one section of the lights. However the geometry is less than ideal as a small difference in one or both of the angles would produce a large difference in the location of this intersection point. Nevertheless, the geometry shows that the length of the lights was at least 200 metres long and likely larger. Since the witness described the row of lights as curving away from the highway at their southern extreme then it may be reasonable to assume a circular object. If one attempts to satisfy the geometry in the figure, with a circle, one obtains a diameter of approximately 470 metres (almost half a kilometer). If the intersection of the red and blue viewing angles is further out over willow creek, then the row or circular arrangement of lights could have been much larger.

An interesting side note is that a giant UFO (triangulated to be between one and two kilometres long) was spotted in this same area by at least 8 witnesses almost 4 years prior on December 11, 1996. You may view the map here to compare the locations between the two cases.

 

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