It was an overcast night in May 1968, when Hans Sorensen, a building contractor, went outside to turn off the water sprinkler by a small tree he had planted.

“I was living in a cabin beside my house, which I was building at the time,” he said. “It was just before 11:00 o’clock when I went out to turn off the sprinkler. I remember that because I had been waiting for the news.”

“As soon as I opened the door I saw this yellow light shining all over the place. It was so bright I could see my neighbor’s house clear as day, and that is almost 600 feet away. At first I thought it must be a car coming up the road but then I knew right away it was much too bright for that. I could even see the ferns under the trees. Another funny thing I noticed was that the ferns were quivering, and so were the leaves, though there wasn’t any breeze.”

Bewildered by the eerie glow about him, Sorensen could only think, "What's going on here?" Then he looked up and there it was - a sight in the air he had never seen before, though he has held a private pilot's licence for many years.

"It was a big yellow light, right over the trees between my neighbor's house and mine. It must have been about 400 feet up and I guessed it was about 15 feet wide, kind of oval shaped.

"I didn't feel any heat or anything but I thought it must have been the light that somehow was making the leaves shake.

"I stood there for several minutes watching it when all of a sudden it seemed to go up a bit and a bluish beam came out of the far side, just as if a hatch or something had been opened.

"As soon as this happened, a small light came out of the big one. It dropped about 300 feet and stopped dead right above the trees. It was just as though it had hit something. Then the blue light went out."

Realizing then that he should have another witness to this extraordinary spectacle, Sorensen ran down the road to tell his neighbor.

"But it was almost as if that light was watching me," he said. "I was just pressing the doorbell when the small light shot up into the big one and the whole thing took off like a shot. It went northeast and was gone in a second, just disappeared.

Immediately after the incident. Sorensen had a second realization of the strength of light cast by the strange object. The darkness afterward was so complete that he had difficulty returning home - and just minutes before he had been running along that road!

Sorensen points to spot above trees near his new house where he saw ball of light drop from larger UFO. Parent body was so bright it turned night into day.