Mysterious Hovering Lights Recorded over Las Vegas

A still image from the video recorded last Thursday. *(KLAS 8 News Now)*

Footage of several mysterious lights hovering over Las Vegas was submitted last week to local news outlet KLAS 8 News Now by a man who asked for only his first name, Bill, to be used.

Bill, a resident of the southeast valley in Las Vegas near West Horizon Parkway and Stephanie Street, was outside in his backyard at around 9 p.m. last Thursday when he noticed the lights to the northwest and decided to record them. According to Bill, the lights might have been over the Las Vegas Strip and the old downtown area.

“I’ve seen tourist helicopters flying around the Strip before, but this was so much bigger and brighter. At the end there, it looks like a plane might be coming in to land at the [Harry Reid International] airport," he said. "It was weird. The lights hung out for about five minutes or so, and then they were gone.”

Mysterious lights reported around Las Vegas can often be traced back to flares or aircraft from Nellis Air Force Base, Creech Air Force Base, or Harry Reid International Airport, but no such convenient explanation currently exists for the recently recorded lights.

A Nellis Air Force Base spokesperson told KLAS that no training was conducted over the valley that night, and a Harry Reid International Airport spokesperson was reportedly unaware of any activity that could have produced the anomalous lights.

The video elicited hundreds of comments from interested viewers, many of whom shared their own hypotheses of what could have been responsible.

One man told KLAS in an email that he had seen the lights before.

"I have been followed by them for a while,” he said. “I suspect it’s federal or police drones.”

Other speculative explanations include secret military exercises, parachute flares, and otherworldly visitors.

Some viewers commented to share their own personal sightings, like a man who emailed KLAS to report he had seen similar lights one night while driving toward Needles, California, on Interstate 40.

“I turned my head for a minute … when I looked back where I saw them, the lights disappeared,” he said.

Another man, who claimed to be a veteran, told KLAS that he's lived in the valley for 23 years and has seen the lights many times.

He said that, in his experience, the lights usually show up to the southwest, near where Interstate 15 turns toward the California state line.

“They appear north and just to the west of Sheep Mountain … I have always assumed it was the military," he said.

No branch of the military or any other organization has taken credit for the phenomenon, and thus so far, the mystery lights remain unexplained.

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