So fast, so far

By Tharuka Dissanaike Pix by Ranjith Perera

It was perfect for a drive. A clear, cool, January night with not a soul in sight. Four young people were heading towards Lewella, on the narrow winding road that leads through Gunnepana to Wattegama, when they saw the light. Chamali Kariyawasam, 24 was the first to see the strange red glow in the sky. Soon the foursome parked their car by the side of the road and got out for a better look.

"The light was red, oblong and blinked in a steady slow rhythm," said Anura Rajapakse 29, who was at the wheel. "It was about 300 feet or so over a lonely tract of paddy fields across from the road. As we watched, the light seemed to come very, very slowly downwards. It was an eerie sight but we were not worried or scared, just curious."

The clear, starlit night of January 1, provided a good backdrop for the glowing light as it descended ever so slowly towards the fields. It was at this point that Anura's cousin Nadeera Prasanna, 21, thought of using the torch in the car to get a better look at the strange object. Nadeera shone the torch upwards but the battery-powered light was not powerful enough to penetrate the darkness or shed any light on the glowing redness, which was still far up above them. But seconds later, the lighted object stopped its descent. Hovering at that height for a short while it began to climb higher. For a second time it stalled and hovered. Then, with incredible speed, the object climbed sideways and upwards until it became a tiny speck in the distance. A few seconds more and it disappeared totally.

"We would have dismissed its significance if not for the speed with which it moved the last time. That was just amazing. I cannot think of anything that would have moved so fast, so far," Anura said.

No one had an explanation for the strange sighting. The elders in the village simply said it must be a 'devatha eliya' (god's light) or 'Hanuman eliya', the ancient belief of travelling gods being visible as glowing lights in the sky.

Unsure of what they encountered that night, the four youth preferred not to discuss it with many people. But they soon found they were not alone in the strange light sightings in the village.

A few kilometres away from the place where Anura and his friends saw the light, is a hamlet called Boruppe, where Sampath, 16 was treated to a strange light display a few days before the sightings by the four. On December 30, at around 9.30 p.m, Sampath a Year 11 student was outside his small house watching the night sky when a strange red-orange light lit up the garden.

"I looked up and saw this large, glowing, round object moving at enormous speed across the night sky. I called out to my family who were all inside the house, but the light moved away far too fast."

But Amara, Sampath's mother managed to get a glimpse of the fiery light as it disappeared fast through the tall trees in the garden.

"It threw a strange but beautiful red light across the garden. Yet the object was not very low-flying either. All I could see was something like a ball of fire- glowing very bright- travelling very fast and across the horizon," she said.

A neighbour, R.B. Jayatilleke 30, who was also out in his garden that night saw the very same red light from some 300 yards away. He too describes the eerie glow it had cast on the ground and the speed at which the object zoomed across the sky.

Jayatilleke was even luckier, he saw the same red light again, a week later traversing the night sky in the identical fashion.

What were these strange lights in distant Gunnepana- a village half an hour's drive from Kandy?

A rational explanation seems to elude those who witnessed the spectacle. "We have seen military aircraft, helicopters, planes and even seen strange lights in the form of 'paras', a type of sodium light used in the battlefield often smuggled home by soldiers coming on leave. This light was very different to all these. It made no noise at all," Anura said.

Could the light have been another Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) like those sighted in Bandarawela two years ago?

In the misty reaches of Bandarawela, a flurry of strange sightings were reported in early 1998. From school children to medical officers, daylight sightings of strange fast-moving lights, were reported within two weeks. Again no explanation was offered. UFO enthusiasts and researchers here in Sri Lanka were agog with descriptions and reports of the spectacular sights, comparing them to similar phenomena across the world.

There are theories that these recent sightings could be the local military testing out unmanned surveillance craft, or a developed country using these areas as a testing ground for their new spy aircraft.

But all this is just speculation. Will these strange sightings too remain a mystery?

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