Once this happened to me with a friend. We were staring at the sky when suddenly a progression of lights started moving quickly across the sky. At first I thought it might be a shower of large meteors about to hit us.

Later on discovered someone had just released a bunch of sky lanterns, something I'd never seen before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_lantern

It can be tricky to judge the distance, speed and size of objects in the sky.

I second this.

Sky lanterns definitely look other worldly under the right conditions.

A similar thing happened to me a few weeks ago, I was so freaked out by it that I downloaded and paid for an app that showed satellite positions. Turns out...my rational side was right, it was indeed a satellite in low orbit, giving it the appearance of a fast speed and a very bright disposition. It was still a weird experience. There were two satellite actually.

As for what this was? Honestly it sounds like people may have seen an air force drill of some military (possibly Russian or US.)

Here's a good one that I think a lot of the 2 or 3 (Triangle) ufo sightings come from.

The NOSS satellites commonly can be seen in a double or triple configuration.

Here is an example image https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7XAxIsInxSM/maxresdefault.jpg

China also launched triple satellite configurations into an almost identical orbit.

http://www.satobs.org/noss.html

Had that same feeling years ago. Went out to a dark place to see the stars. Ended up seeing a light jumping around on the horizon. Then there was a bright white flash that lit up the whole field and forest, but not like lightning. No shadows, no source of light. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, no thunder. It wasn't lightning.

Pretty scared, I kept watching the jumping light on the horizon. A few minutes later the white flash again. I ran back to my car.

I had the same ridiculous thoughts as you. "what if they know I saw?"

It freaked me out for a long time. The way the light was moving.... Too fast to see the movement even, it was here, then there. I watched it bounce around for at least a full half hour, it wasn't a satellite or a meteor.

Similar lights in the Australian desert appear related to inversion layers refracting headlights over the horizon (http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s818193.htm)

Interesting. I suppose that's possible. It was a single light and it was changing colors. Its movement tended to stay within a specific range.

Do you have any thoughts on the white flashes? They were the scary part. Everything was perfectly daytime for a split second, and there was no fading of the light like with lightning. It was immediately all white then immediately dark again. It creeps me out thinking about it.

The light on the horizon seemed 50 miles away, but the flash was right on us, extremely bright, and blanketed everything evenly.

That's what the Men in Black would say.

Or in this case (if you check the researcher's surname), the Ministry of Magic.

Saw a similar light when I was a child, my brothers saw it too. But this one was right above our heads in the sky, and there was no flash when it disappeared. Bounced from one place to another, and it was really far away, so we are talking hundreds of kilometers in a second. Never forgot about it.

Dang. That's scary.

While I was watching I started out in awe feeling like "holy crap, I'm looking at a UFO!" But after staring at it for a long time and then having the white flashes I quickly changed to "oh fuck, I'm near a UFO".

I was with someone, they were very scared, too.

Was about 10 years old, and the thing was just a bit brighter than the stars. Wasn't scary, it was exciting to see at the moment.

Check out "Iridium flares" - they sound a lot like you've described, including coming in pairs.

Got a good video of one? I watched one and it wasn't similar to what I saw.

Not at all. They don't jump around and are not extremely bright.

Sounds like the Marfa lights in the west Texas high desert:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights

this is pretty crazy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yglJYW244Fo

Interesting. A little more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_flash

Since we're all giving our UFO encounters I'll chip in with mine.

About 25yrs ago as a teenager and utterly obsessed with the supernatural and the unexplained, my family were on a fly drive holiday on the west coast of the US.

One night in a roadside motel in the Nevada desert, I was woken up by a strange, loud, rythmic, droning sound outside. Absolutely convinced that it was a UFO landing and terrified that if I moved or made a noise I'd be abducted, I laid still, sweating with my heart racing for hours until the sun came up.

Turned out to be a dodgy air conditioning unit.

Similar story here. As a kid I was laying in bed staring at a bright disk floating in the sky at night. Totally sure it was a UFO. Turned out to be a reflection of a street light in the window.

Using this thread to add my own:

I was around 14 and also obsessed with aliens and the supernatural. I was living out in the boonies on a road that had just started to be developed (one long road with a smaller road splitting off down to a cul-de-sac with a few houses a mile or so off the main road).

I was walking the dog one evening, headed down the main road and turned off to walk down the side road to the cul-de-sac. It was dark and cold but as I turned down the side road, I could see a bright rectangular light floating above the ground down where the side road ended a mile away.

I was pretty freaked out and stood there squinting at it for a while, psyching myself up to go check it out. In the end, I decided that I would never forgive myself if I didn't go witness what was clearly an alien craft hovering over the road on my dark little street.

So, I walked down toward the end of the side road (with the dog to protect me of course) until about halfway down, I got one of those perspective shifts that made me laugh. In the dark (no street lights, only a few houses set a good way back from the road) I could only see the glowing light but as I got closer, I could clearly see that this was a small bus with the light from inside spilling out through the windshield.

It turns out, the local library had started a "Bookmobile" route out to our little country neighborhood so locals could check out books without driving into the city. The bus was so lit up inside and the surrounding area was so dark that from a mile away, all I could see was the bright glowing rectangle of the windshield.

Needless to say I stopped inside the bus and checked out a book or two. Probably some ridiculous fluff from Whitley Strieber or Stephen King ;)

I was on a beach off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka late in the night. I saw what seemed like a star dart around in the sky. I figured it was just an aircraft, but it moved extremely fast in a near zig-zag fashion, making sharp angled turns - something no aircraft can do.

I've been on a UFO binge lately, prompted by all the news about Oumuamua. So many credible and fascinating reports.

I've also seen less resistance to the idea of UFOs than there used to be. People claiming to have seen a UFO aren't outright dismissed as cuckoo anymore.

What makes you guess it wasn’t a drone?

Probably because it was too high up, and probably because I went a few years ago when commercial drones weren't well developed or even widely available

A more rational explanation is that the region is hotly contested by a number of world powers, and that was probably some experimental military aircraft

My dad told me of seeing some fighter jets following a light in the sky near Lemore airforce base just a few years ago. He figured it was another jet, but then the light did, what seemed to him, an impossible turn, then took off north at an incredible speed. The fighter jets followed, but not even close to the same speed, as the light was no longer visible a few seconds after it turned direction due to its apparent speed. What to make of it? Who knows.

A few years back I saw a plane that was behaving very strangely, so I tried to take a photo. My phone shut itself off. Afterwards I tried to turn it back on and it was back to 20%. I’ve since wondered if our phones come with remote shutdowns.

Your battery was wearing out. The camera draws a lot of power and if a degraded battery can't output enough then a protection circuit will shut down the device below a voltage threshold.

Have you considered seeking therapy to work on your fears?