By Jessie Stensland / Whidbey News-Times

On Nov. 27, a man in Oak Harbor reported to a UFO tracking website that he and his fiancee had watched unusual lights in the sky at night.

“We saw lights dashing back and forth in our fir trees,” he wrote. “They seemed to want to keep the fir trees between us and them. Obviously intelligent objects because of their unique movements.”

He tried to get a video on his phone but got only black. There was no swamp gas, lasers or other “terrestrial explanation,” he wrote.

Over the years, residents from across Whidbey Island have reported many unidentified flying object sightings to the Whidbey News-Times, South Whidbey Record and organizations that track them.

Anyone who has seen something suspicious in the skies or is intrigued by the mysterious objects might want to attend a special event 2-5 p.m. at the Coupeville Library on Jan. 12. “UFOs, Meteors, Military” will be presented by Maurene Morgan, the state director of the Mutual UFO Network. The group is a high-profile nonprofit that investigates UFO sightings across the nation.

Members of the public are invited to share or report their own events.

Whidbey skies made the news in June after a weather camera captured an image of what appeared to be a rocket taking off from the island. Nobody has conclusively identified what the object was, though one investigator concluded it was likely a time-lapsed image of a rescue helicopter leaving Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

Sightings on Whidbey Island go back at least to 1974, when MUFON investigated a sighting of a former Navy lieutenant and deemed the report “credible and sound.”

The man and several other witnesses reported seeing a bright, orange-yellow stationary light in the southern sky after all the aircraft at the base were “on the deck,” according to the MUFON report.

“They watched as the UFO shot straight up for approximately 3 degrees of arc from a position 25 degrees above the horizon in the direction of the Naval Air Station,” the report states. “The object then abruptly stopped, made a sharp right-angle turn in the horizontal direction and came straight towards them.”

The former Navy officer looked at the object through a telephoto lens as it passed over them and noted that it was a perfect, completely silent circle.