On a warm June evening in 2002, my wife and I found ourselves down by the lakeside in Mississauga, Ontario, witnessing an extraordinary phenomenon that has left me pondering ever since. At about 9:30 PM, a brilliant amber light emerged roughly ten degrees above the horizon, pulsating on and off with a deliberate rhythm before settling into a steady glow. Almost instantly, another light blinked on to the right of our vantage point — it was as though the lights were in conversation, twisting and flickering in a way that defies easy description.
These were no ordinary lights. They danced in a strange, almost hypnotic jig: disappearing only to reappear just to the left of the original, and then flashing to the right once more. The luminous display continued for minutes, even stretching beyond an hour, punctuated by sudden bursts of white and green flashes that formed vague shapes against the night sky.
What adds to the mystery was the apparent interaction with aircraft overhead — commercial planes passed calmly nearby, their steady courses contrasting sharply with the erratic movements of these lights. The CN Tower stood as a towering reference point; the lights hovered just above its 1800-foot stature, at an estimated height between 2,500 and 3,500 feet and about 5 to 6 miles off the shore. Despite the glaring proximity to the city of Toronto, the lights held a stubborn presence, neither flares nor stars, and certainly not helicopters.
Back at home, the children took up the vigil with binoculars and a telescope, confirming the lights’ persistence and their uncanny refusal to drift from the triangular formations they formed around a central glowing beacon. These glowing orbs pulsed and faded, turning off for minutes at a time only to pop back into existence like something out of a dream.
The shapes hinted through the binoculars were ambiguous yet suggestive — a lozenge shape seemed most fitting — casting a surreal silhouette against the shimmering cityscape and the vast expanse of the lake. The lights’ enigmatic dance ceased momentarily while I recounted this tale, but the lingering impression remains: whatever we saw that night was a mystery writ large across the sky, a spectral ballet of light and shadow that still pulls at the edges of belief and leaves the mind tangled in wonder.