It was when I was attending University, in a town 60 km away from home, which meant I often drove home for weekends. And usually did it friday night (quite often after midnight) to avoid traffic and skipping classes. That specific night the sky had some low clouds and some open spots, and about 10 minutes into the trip I started seing three colourful lights ahead of me, apparently dancing around the sky and then disappearing only to reappear a little later. I thought to myself “what the BEEP?!”, and went on driving, keeping an eye on the sky as I drove.

At some point I had to start looking into my rear view mirror to spot the lights, but kept puzzling about what that strange phenomenon might be almost till I got to town, although I stopped seing it some 10 minutes before that. I was alreading seing my hometown lights looming ahead when I recalled one crucial fact that provided an explanation for the thing.

That week, a disco about halfway between the town I was studying in and my hometown had innaugurated a new attraction: a set of projectors that were to be used as advertising for the place. I knew that because… well… I was in college. In college one always knows about stuff like that. They were just being reflected off the clouds, and were visible for miles in either direction. So it remained UFO for about half an hour. But had I not known about the disco, the phenomenon might have kept that condition for much longer.

(they were soon forced to turn the projectors down, BTW – the town I was studying in has an international airport, and they interfered with its operations, according to what I’ve heard)

You can’t post a picture of a blurry kite that someone mistook for an alien spaceship and say it’s proof that UFOs (alien spacecraft) don’t exist.

Just admit that you are afraid, and that the hundreds of thousands of sitings a year has reminded you that, as scientists, you made a mistake you are afraid to atone for.

Wikipedia didn’t really have much on this, but Ibiblio (from UNC) does:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ghosts/bmtn.html

Didn’t miss much. Flares on balloons and the hoaxer was seen by a neighbor.

That sounds like the green running light on an aircraft.