[frankotank]

roughly 1983 I was on the outskirts of Knob Noster on a gravel road (by Whiteman AFB). having a few beers with my girl and sitting on the hood chilling. off in the distance we noticed a red light. so what. plane or whatever. we didn't even talk about it at first, but it seemed as if it was coming our way....getting closer. one thing about the entire incident is that I never had a good feel of how close or how far away it was. it was so dark. anyways, no noise (but coulda been too far away) and gradually grew in size...getting closer. now we're really watching it. eventually it.....well the lights changed from 1 to 3 as if it had turned. it was coming south towards us and then seemed as if it turned east towards Sedalia. so we could now see 3 lights now, a bigger one in the middle and two smaller ones on the either side. it was definitely moving west now. I'm an air force brat man....I know what a plane looks like big time. never seen one that would show up like this at night....like....the big light in the middle was just....weird. like I said, couldn't judge the distance and depending on the overall size of the thing it coulda been pretty close if it was smaller, like semi-truck sized or something. but even if it was huge and far away I remember thinking we should hear it, but we never did. we watched it heading west and then it was just gone. neither of us actually SAW it go, it was just gone. we were.....umm.....kind of like WOW! you know? just WOW.

almost immediately we noticed something else behind us....in the opposite direction from where the red lights came from....towards Whiteman. like I said it was a pretty dark night so it was easy to notice way off in the distance two choppers with bright lights. as they got closer it was apparent that they were shining lights onto the ground and moving back and forth in what could only have been a search pattern.

the light had been pretty damned interesting! not like....scary or anything, just not easily explainable. this new development with the choppers though.....it just changed the entire mood. we were already amped and excited and then see this happening behind us, assessing the situation on the fly as the choppers are getting closer. wondering what in the hell they could possibly be looking for! moving back and forth over pure country ass woods and fields and shit....working their way closer to us with each pass. I mean, you start imagining something gross booking thru the corn fields trying to stay ahead of those choppers and heading right towards US! LOL....we got the heck outta there. honestly I didn't even feel OK once inside the car. just wanted to scoot man.

reading back over what I've written here.....it really doesn't seem like much. at the time though, my heart rate was very much UP. I did NOT want to be there anymore. never before and never again did I see choppers searching again, let alone over civilian property and most strangely....at night.