Searchlight "UAP" in Wisconsin - Flanders Family Christmas Lights

Mick West

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Xs2A3-FqY

Frequently Asked Questions:

1) What happened?

On the night of Dec 1, 2022, two people, Ken and Kim, saw some lights moving on some clouds near the town of Fredonia in Wisconsin. They took videos of the light at the same time, but from different locations. Interest in these lights simmered for a while, then Ben Hansen and Brittany Barbieri started an investigation. They were unable to find the source of the lights, and speculated they might be some kind of UAP. They did recognize the lights resembled searchlights or spotlights, but were unable to find any that matched.

2) What are the lights?

The lights appear to be spotlights on the Flanders Family Christmas Lights. A new addition to the locally famous light show, the Flanders installed six powerful spotlights, synchronized to music, that trace out complex patterns. When there is low cloud overhead they spots from the lights can be seen on the clouds.
Flanders Montage.jpg
On the night in question the clouds were at about 6500 feet, and so the moving spots could be seen from over 10 miles away.

3) What evidence is there that it's the Flanders?

A) The spots on the clouds look like spotlights, and the Flanders have powerful moving spotlights that can illuminate clouds
B) The Flanders house is right where the lines of sight of the two video meet, and almost exactly on the more accurate line on sight from Kim's location.
Kim Ken Intersection of lines of sight'.jpg
C) The Flanders house Faces Kim, consistent with the movement of the beams
D) A cloud placed at 6500 feet, halfway between the Flanders and Kim, is a perfect match for when the beams are directed towards Kim.Kim's View geolocated.jpg
E) The Flanders confirmed that they think the videos show their light
Flanders confirms it's their lgihts.jpg
F) The Flanders confirmed that on Dec1, only five lights were working.
Flanders - one had a bad connection.jpg
G) The 380w spotlights used are about the most powerful consumer spots you can get, easily capable of shining on low cloud in the dark.


4) Why can't we see the beams?

Spotlights are optimized to create beams visible from close up, which means a very powerful narrow beam. A few miles away and you won't be able to see the beam. A visible beam comes from a small amount of light bouncing off dust and moisture in the air along its length. However when the beam hits something like a cloud then ALL the light is reflected creating a bright spot which would obviously be a lot more visible than the beam.

5) How can we see them from so far away?

The lights are very powerful, but to see them you need a line of sight to what they are illuminating. They illuminate the bottom of the cloud layer, and it needs a large even cloud layer at about 6500 feet to create the effect we see.

6) Why are there only five if Flanders has six?

On Dec 1 one light had a bad connection, so only five were working.

7) Why are there trails behind the lights?

There are not. What you see is the beam of light, at a shallow angle, penetrating the clouds

8) Why does the pattern seem not to match perfectly?

The light show is 51 minutes long with 13 unique minutes of spotlight motion set to music. In addition the lights are not always be visible due to uneven cloud cover.

9) Why don't they see it all the time?

This is the first year that the Flanders have had the display. It had only been in place a few days on Dec1. In addition the weather is variable and Dec 1 was likely the best possible conditions for seeing the lights.

10) Didn't Ben Hansen investigate the Flanders house and eliminate it?

He did, using a combination of #4 and #5. However that was a premature elimination, as he mistakenly assumed that if you could not see the beam, then you would not be able to see the spot against the cloud. But, as noted, the spot is a lot brighter. In his tests no clouds were illuminated.

11) Why can't you replicate it?

You could, but you'd need the right weather with an extensive medium-high (6,000 ft) cloud layer. There's only so many days in the season and there's a winter storm. If you want to try, the show runs from 5PM to approximately 10:20PM. But the spotlights are only on for 13 minutes out of the 51 minute set - so keep watching for at least 30 minutes. You might want to check with the Flanders to see if it's on. Then go to 43.448051702, -88.103568870, approximately the intersection of Wallace Lake Road and N Church Road, and look ENE (just to the left of the road, looking east.) You might want to try different locations based on the weather conditions. It will be cold. You might die if you pick a bad day. I'd wait until at least Tue Dec 27, but Dec 29 might be the best bet.

2022-12-22_03-09-08.jpg

12) How could they be the Flanders if it was at 10:50 and the Flanders light show ends at 10:30

They were testing the lights that night, it was not yet part of the normal program.

2022-12-23_11-06-10.jpg
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The above is a summary of the thread and subsequent investigation, my original first post follows.
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Ben Hansen released a video, timed with the publication of a Daily Mail article, about what look like searchlights moving over a cloud layer, viewed simultaneously two two people (Kim, and Ken) in Wisconsin.

From Ben's video description:
Article:
At about 10:47PM on December 1, 2022, several witnesses reported seeing what they described as "Firefly" orbish white lights dancing in the sky and coming down beyond to the level of the highway. From two independent locations miles apart, the phenomena was recorded as 5 or more UAPs streaked over the sky in formation underneath cloud cover.


And from the Daily Mail
Article:
trange lights shooting across rural Wisconsin skies this month were filmed by witnesses in multiple stunning videos obtained by DailyMail.com – with one having a spooky up-close encounter.

The footage from December 1 shows bright white lights zipping across cloudy skies over the rolling farmland near West Bend and Fredonia, Wisconsin.

Moving at incredible speeds and appearing to come from above the thin cloud layer that night, the phenomena left witnesses believing they had seen a true UFO display.


Rather misleading descriptions, as the lights just look like searchlights (sometimes referred to as spotlights) from the ground shining up on the cloud base (which Ben says is at 6500 feet, based on weather data).

Approximate locations are given in the video, but we are able to more precisely geolocate Kim's based on the road markings and telegraph poles.
2022-12-20_08-47-29.jpg

This gives us a line of sight, towards the lake, just south of the small town of Belgium, WI

2022-12-20_08-51-16.jpg

Ken's location and direction are only roughly known, so we can't get a great triangulation. But we see from the motions of the light that the move along Kim's line of sight, and that Ken is looking at them from the side, so it seems like the light source is very roughly in this direction.
2022-12-20_08-55-25.jpg

Here we see both videos synced, I've added an echo to see the paths of the lights over the cloud layer. The light transition from pointing towards Kim (the grey region in the above Google Earth images) to what looks like a circle over the source.


Objections to the Searchlight explanation include not being able to see the beams, but in this even more dramatic video of lights during the rehearsal of a concert, we see the same effect. Light spots on low cloud, no visible beam.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCYeBJkDIAM
 

Attachments

  • Firefly Echo angles.mp4
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Objections to the Searchlight explanation include not being able to see the beams

In clear air, you can't see beams of light that aren't shining right in your eyes. You can only see the beams when they interact with something opaque, such as a cloud canopy. Sure, it's doesn't have to be hugely opaque, but if Japanese urban pollution from your subsequent youtube vid isn't enough, WI countryside certainly with clear air won't be. What makes these people so sure that the beams *would* be visible - what's the science/evidence behind their beliefs and claims?

The emphasis on the incredible speed of whatever caused these was also yet another demonstration that so many people don't understand parallax. The source of the light was probably only moving a foot per second, there's no need to invoke anything fast moving as the cause of these lights at all.
 
In clear air, you can't see beams of light that aren't shining right in your eyes. You can only see the beams when they interact with something opaque, such as a cloud canopy.
It varies, there is no absolutely "clear air" unless you are in Antarctica. You can usually see the beam at night even of a bright flashlight if:

A) you are at a relative shallow angle to it
or
B) it's really bright and you are sufficiently close.

Consider, some extreme examples: the Luxor Sky Beam or, on a smaller scale, a laser.

Promo/party searchlights are designed to be bright enough so the beams are visible from nearby in most atmospheric conditions. The beam is the point.

But if you are far enough way, then you simply won't see it. The spot on the clouds is a lot brighter than the beam, so that's visible from a longer distance.
 
A helicopter couldnt do that right? Meaning we would definitely see beams from a helicopter I assume.
there's a weird thing in the air it looks in Kim's video (top left corner)
helicopter.png
Article:
Andrea Lynn reportedly shot four videos of multicolored lights going in circles and moving across the sky at a quick pace earlier that night. One of the videos apparently shows a single white light appear and then three additional lights flash in a triangular shape around it before they disappeared followed by the central light also vanishing.


but 70 miles away
and that is definitely too far right? ive got a christmas light show starting dec 1st but 70 miles to the SW. (looking up christmas events because our tree lightings tend to be around Dec 1st. a nighttime christmas parade in West Bend but it was 3 days prior) edit: actually an ongoing chritmas village light thing in west bend too, but i see no indication of spot light use
 
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Another example seems to be the same night, but 70 miles away.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/253557958093480/posts/5647918088657413

it's hard to see, and I don't have the capability to look at this frame by frame, but to me this particular one looks less like spotlights on clouds and more like reflections on glass. At about 20 seconds in, when she gasps, the light appears to me to go over the tree on the right. Can anyone else see that?
 
it's hard to see, and I don't have the capability to look at this frame by frame, but to me this particular one looks less like spotlights on clouds and more like reflections on glass. At about 20 seconds in, when she gasps, the light appears to me to go over the tree on the right. Can anyone else see that?
you can see it a bit better if you lower the playback speed. i see branches in front..but its so grainy and the light is so dim and the branches so thin.....
2.jpg
 
Ken's location and direction are only roughly known, so we can't get a great triangulation.
how did the youtube video guy determine the location you have on the map?
Article:
Meanwhile, Ken began to capture the moment from his home in Fredonia, which is five miles from Kimberly’s location, the Daily Mail reported. Neither wanted to give their last names to the Daily Mail.
 
This is all very similar to the lights I saw while driving recently (explained in this Metabunk thread). Unfortunately my videos didn't show anything. The source of what we saw was over 50km away and were quite similar in their behaviour (if less luminous and blue in colour) to the lights in the videos that Ben is promoting as "orbs" flying "in formation".
 
you can see it a bit better if you lower the playback speed.
Thanks, I managed to do so from the original, but as Mick first posted it, there was no option to change speed. Then it looks like it's in the clouds, so I was incorrect.
 
I emailed the Belgium (WI) chamber of commerce and asked them if they knew of any spotlights. They said the a light show near Holy Cross church just added them to their display this year. And they are in the right position, which would be quite the coincidence. So a likely, but unconfirmed, candidate.
2022-12-20_15-18-17.jpg
 
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so we went from "it's ufos" to "it's a guy raising money for a Children's Hospital." the Daily Mail should donate the click bait money they made to the Children's Hospital too.

edit: oh that was last year, this year the money raised goes to the Ronald McDonald House. Same difference.
 
This is my video from Green Bay, Wisconsin last year showing strikingly similar lights, although my video didn’t go viral. Notice it was taken 53 weeks ago, so obviously these are strictly christmas aliens.
 
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Ben Hansen raised some objections on twitter:

I respect you @MickWest but this doesn't add up. The Flanders Christmas display is 12.5 miles from our witnesses. The family told us they use 380W DMX party lights (DJ stage lights). This video is the house recorded from 2 miles. Do we really need to go back 10 more miles?


Beyond 2.5 miles, the lights couldn't even be seen on the house. The display runs from 5pm - 10:30pm every night so if this was the explanation, one would be able to see it every day for the past few weeks. The light motion is programed, repeated, and not random.

Not to mention, the pattern does not resemble what was captured on camera, nor are beams visible whatsoever in the witness videos. This demo was recorded under similar conditions at 10:50PM (same as the event). You may feel the case is solved, but we still have work to do.
Content from External Source
The problem here is that Ben is showing the beam of the light as being visible at 2 miles, and then claiming that the spot of the light on the clouds would not be visible 10 miles away.

(The distance is actually 10.8 miles from Kim to Flanders, not 12.5)

However a spot is vastly brighter than a beam, so would be perfectly visible. I illustrate this here:
2022-12-20_23-09-05.jpg

That square on the wall is the spot, obviously way brighter than the beam. Which you would not expect to be visible at a large distance.

So his objection is incorrect.
 
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Great work. However, for me, your final sentence is the killer: "But the real puzzle here is why people thought it might have been anything else".
From @Mick West 's OP, "Ben Hansen released a video, timed with the publication of a Daily Mail article..."

Hansen and the Daily Mail "thought" the things that bring them publicity and profit. Other people like Kim and Ken "thought" things that they've been primed to think, starting with the basic conspiracist concept that "I don't understand it, therefore it must be esoteric, supernatural, or sinister."

This has gone on ever since the media found out that juicy fairy tales fetch a bigger audience than dry facts. We are now in the electronic Information Age, and disinformation for fun and profit travels just as fast as facts.

Rant concluded. I have no solution to the problem.
 
While I do agree that these look like searchlights, I feel I should at least say this, as there are some bits which strike me as wrong in your debunking:



The video from the concert you posted as evidence that not all searchlights have beams was obviously from a drone display, in my experience, drones don't often have beams leading to them from the ground, as the, usually 2.4ghz transmissions which control them are often invisible to the naked eye.



While you can get totally clear skies at this time of year, which would make the beams less visible, that's not normally the case when you have low cloud



In one of the videos, the longer trail of one of the lights changes side, if this was a beam of light protected from a fixed base, the weather conditions to allow that to happen would be unlikely. This is the only thing which left me looking for a different explanation.



The lights almost look like they are being protected from above the base of the clouds, this is particularly apparent in the video which starts with the blue tinged light over the hills, when one of the lights seems to become less focused in some areas. If the air traffic control hadn't been sure there were no aircraft in the area at the time, I would have been convinced this was a helicopter messing about.
 
However a spot is vastly brighter than a beam, so would be perfectly visible. I illustrate this here:

plus in the analysis video Ben says he brightened the spots.

The light motion is programed, repeated, and not random.
i dont see the pattern repeat in Ben's "proof". Perhaps a longer video, Ben, until the pattern repeats.

That might explain why all Ben's videos are so short.

and explain my original suspicion that Kim and Ken were coordinating...because in the OP video analysis at 20 mins he shows side by side how Kim and Ben captured the same odd movement in their very short videos. which would mean either they were miraculously filming very short videos at the exact same time or the lightshow is a repeat pattern.
 
The video from the concert you posted as evidence that not all searchlights have beams was obviously from a drone display, in my experience, drones don't often have beams leading to them from the ground, as the, usually 2.4ghz transmissions which control them are often invisible to the naked eye.
the description on the video says:
Article:
According to Nissan Stadium, the lights were being tested in preparation for Sunday's gig at the time the light sighting.

The mysterious light seems to have been projected by a laser in the clouds above.
 
Another object from
i dont see the pattern repeat in Ben's "proof". Perhaps a longer video, Ben, until the pattern repeats.
To settle this final objection I asked the Flanders:
Mick on Facebook said:
I'm interested in what you think about this. I seems like your lights match what is seen. But from you perspective, does this look like part of the pattern of your lights, from Dec 1? (Given that it might not all be visible)

Flanders Family Christmas Light Show said:
Yes it’s my light the way they are sequenced
 
The video from the concert you posted as evidence that not all searchlights have beams was obviously from a drone display, in my experience, drones don't often have beams leading to them from the ground, as the, usually 2.4ghz transmissions which control them are often invisible to the naked eye.
If those are drones, they are aliens drones, they move so fast.

No, sorry, those lights are 100% spotlights from the stadium.
 
I've confirmed with the Flanders that on Dec 1 one light had a bad connection, which explains why we only see five lights.

2022-12-21_08-58-54.jpg
 
@Mick West i'm still confused about the origin story. Typically people upload videos to social media and then a UFO channel takes them to put on their own channel or analyze them. But i'm not finding where Kim and Ken uploaded their videos originally (it would be nice to be able to see the full, unedited, unenhanced videos for ourselves.)

Do you know where the original videos are? I highly doubt two separate people in rural Wisconsin both had heard of Ben Henson to send videos directly to him. I've never heard of him that i can remember.

THe originals must be online somewhere.
 
Do you know where the original videos are? I highly doubt two separate people in rural Wisconsin both had heard of Ben Henson to send videos directly to him. I've never heard of him that i can remember.
They explain it on Tucker Carlson. A guy called Chris saw some lights (much further away, so his video is unimpressive) and started a Facebook group. The others posted their videos there. Ben got involved, and promoted the story.

9 minutes in

Source: https://www.bitchute.com/video/piHRgnMtxgpk/
 
Transcript of Chris on Tucker:
So my wife and I were driving down I 43 going northbound. This was on December 2, right around 6:55, a little before seven o'clock. And after we were driving down the expressway for about two miles, my wife noticed lights in the sky that basically would pulse through the sky in like a matter of a second, it would clear the entire sky from one horizon to the other. And it was very odd. And you know, at first, we just didn't really know what it was.

So we continued on our drive, we were going to go to Candy Cane Lane with our daughters, which is a holiday tradition for us. And we drove for 20 miles and the entire 20 miles, we continue to see these lights that would pulse through the sky incredibly fast. There'll be like a five to 32nd delay in between, and then they'd either come back again, the same direction, or they would come back the opposite direction. And it just seemed very odd.

So at this point, I wanted to capture some of this on on video. And I thought it was incredibly odd once again that we had seen these for 20 miles, I just started rolling things out in my head of what that could be. So we got off an exit in Greenfield, which is a more populated area, and pulled into a church parking lot and looked up in the southern sky, which was the direction we were seeing these while driving. And the only thing I noticed in the sky at that point was a bluish purple hue up in the sky. And I thought that was odd.

And I wanted to capture something on video, my thought was to send it to a local meteorologist and show him exactly what we were seeing. So I took out my phone, set it to video mode and just started recording. And nothing was happening. And of course, I thought, well, this is great. You know, we're not going to be able to capture whatever we're seeing on film. And within a 10 second period of time, there was a white light that had illuminated in the middle of this blue hue that was in the sky. And it just sat there for about 10 seconds.

And then it shot forward but shot out into three different directions. It almost reminded me of what you would see you know, when you go to like a Blue Angels performance or something like that, and the jets come at you and then flank out into different positions. And this happened for an incredible amount of time it moved in in different directions clearing the horizon from side to side, front to back, there was no rhyme or reason to it. You know, I thought if it would be from a display or anything like that, or spotlights, you would definitely see some sort of a repeating pattern to this. And it was just completely erratic.

We continued to watch it for 10 minutes and took videos on and off our daughter's unfortunately, were very excited to see the holiday lights that we were going to see and started to go into meltdown mode. So we stole them as long as we could tell them that we were watching Santa in the sky. But it was absolutely incredible what we saw. And later on what really piqued my interest even even more so than what we saw is I wanted to figure out what this was.

And as as we dug deeper, I went on to Facebook and I basically just did a search for lights in the sky. And I've sorted by most recent and wanted to see if anyone in our local communities had seen this. And I was astounded by what we found. There were folks all over the state all over the country that had seen very similar things on these two evenings. And so I started to just collect some of this actually started a Google Doc and wanted to collect what we hadn't seen to try and get to the bottom of what exactly this was and then compiled some of those videos and started a Facebook group just so that people could continue to share what we had seen and But from that point on, I feel like the rest is kind of history because Ben Hansen reached out to us, and was very interested in what we were seeing and kind of work to compile a lot of the different video evidence that we have.[/ex]
Content from External Source
 
One of the objections there:
You know, I thought if it would be from a display or anything like that, or spotlights, you would definitely see some sort of a repeating pattern to this. And it was just completely erratic.
Content from External Source
The lights have long sequences that are synced to music, so would appear erratic from a distance, and would not repeat for several minutes. Also individual light's visibility would vary randomly with the cloud cover.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgBk0zv5QmY
 
These LED 360 lights are pretty damn powerful. Also the focus is motorised and programmable. So for instance, you can focus on a cloud layer, making it even brighter.
 
Chris on Tucker said:
So my wife and I were driving down I 43 going northbound. This was on December 2, right around 6:55, a little before seven o'clock. And after we were driving down the expressway for about two miles, my wife noticed lights in the sky that basically would pulse through the sky in like a matter of a second, it would clear the entire sky from one horizon to the other. And it was very odd. And you know, at first, we just didn't really know what it was.

So we continued on our drive, we were going to go to Candy Cane Lane with our daughters, which is a holiday tradition for us. And we drove for 20 miles and the entire 20 miles,
2022-12-21_11-44-31.jpg

Seems like if he was going north he'd be going away from Candy Cane Lane, unless there's another one.
 
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