The bright white lights hovering over the Colony Hills Community on Thursday night were precisely choreographed and didn't skip a beat.They seemed to spin in four invisible corners, then zoom together in the center, spin, rhythmically separate and do it all over again.
'There were four lights up there,' said Dave Loch, 67. 'It reminded me of an old-fashioned square dance.'
Added wife Grace: 'It was like four huge disks of light.'
Spin. Zoom. Spin. Separate. Spin. Zoom. Spin. Separate.
Grace Loch (pronounced, they said, 'like the Loch Ness monster') spotted the light show around 10 p.m. when she took Charlie Brown, her mixed-breed pooch, outside one last time before calling it a night.
The pup didn't seem fazed as his 68-year-old owner waited for a boom that would identify the lights as a thunderstorm, sure to send Charlie Brown crashing through the porch screen.
'I looked closer and I saw these things all whirling around up there. Mind you, I'm in my nightgown and bare feet,' she said Friday.
Pause the special effects. Grace Loch wants to make something perfectly clear: 'We weren't drinking and we don't smoke whacky tobacky.'
Now, cue the scream. Hearing it, her husband came running. Fast.
'The way you were screaming out there I thought it was maybe a bobcat or a mountain lion,' he told her Friday.
He didn't expect what he saw over his mobile home on Colony Hills Drive. Startled, Dave Loch dialed 911.
He said dispatchers seemed lost on what to do, muttering something like, 'We'll check on it.'
The sheriff's office had no UFO reports Thursday night, spokesman Kevin Doll said. That doesn't mean there were no calls. It just means the report might not have migrated from the 911 center.
The Lochs weren't the only ones in Colony Hills who saw the spectacle in the sky. Across the street about 8 p.m., Joyce Thibert was letting out Dewey the miniature Schnauzer.
Four, maybe six lights danced magically in the sky like a kaleidoscope, she said.
'They would come to the center and then shoot apart. Come together and then shoot apart,' said Thibert, 68.
She didn't think too much about it, not exactly eager to delve into the unknown. She and husband Don 'just kind of dismissed it and went inside.'
But when the Lochs called, she considered the possibilities. Could it be alien visitors?
'I believe that's a possibility,' Thibert said. 'God didn't say we are the only ones here. That's the way I look at it.'
Base McKnight, 66, didn't notice anything amiss until the Lochs' late-night knock at his door. 'There were four images in the sky. It rotated in a spiral,' he said.
But he used to set up trade shows and exhibits, and is well-versed in lighting effects. To him, it looked like a spotlight and it appeared to be coming from the Chancey and Morris Bridge roads area.
'Here again with Halloween coming, who knows,' McKnight said. 'To me, it wasn't frightening at all. But I could see how to others it could be.'
Grace Loch didn't get much shut-eye Thursday. It wasn't until after sunrise that her fears quieted somewhat.
'I guess they weren't dangerous, being that we weren't annihilated in our sleep.'
Not that she's a big believer in extraterrestrials. But she will stop channel surfing if a show on UFOs is on the tube.
And it's not implausible that a UFO could buzz by. Anything unknown is an unidentified flying object, after all.
The National UFO Reporting Center's Web site says 13 sightings have been reported in the Tampa Bay area this year. Last month, a family spotted a triangular object moving like a 'stealth bomber' during a storm in New Port Richey. In Wesley Chapel, a man and his son spotted a pear-shaped object flying just above the tree line.
In Zephyrhills, one reportedly shot across the sky in March. The oval craft - which changed colors - hovered for a bit, then started moving slowly before disappearing.
Later on Friday, 'realist' McKnight was motoring along State Road 54 to pick up his grandson. Just west of Morris Bridge Road he spotted vehicles beneath big tents at the Fraternal Order of Eagles #3752 property and stopped to check things out.
McKnight wasn't looking at the cars.
What he found there, he said, was the UFO: spiraling spotlights. Four of them. Safely on the ground.
'As I thought, it was spotlights rather than anything extraterrestrial,' he said.
Spin. Zoom. Spin. Separate.
McKnight enlightened the Lochs. They remain skeptical.
'The car show is still going on. I'll see if it's up there tonight,' Grace said Friday.
'It looks like we won't be beamed up anyway.'
Florida Couple Reports Whirling UFOs
Florida Couple Reports Whirling UFOs
