Zoomed image of mysterious orange light seen Jan. 9 near Van Buren, Ark. (photo: Col. Brian Fields, USAF, ret.)

In the wake of reports of unidentified objects flying over Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a retired Air Force pilot has his own mystery with a rash of bright, colorful lights he photographed hovering in skies over western Arkansas last week.

"I believe these lights were not of this world, and I feel a duty and responsibility to come forward," Col. Brian Fields told WND. "I have no idea what they were."

Fields, 61, was cooking chicken at his Van Buren, Ark., home Jan. 9 when just before 7 p.m., he observed two intensely bright lights as he looked to the southeast close to the horizon.

Zoomed image of mysterious yellow light seen Jan. 9 near Van Buren, Ark. (photo: Col. Brian Fields)

"At first I thought they were landing lights from an aircraft," he said. "As I continued to observe them they began to slowly disappear, then suddenly one reappeared, followed by two, then three. On at least one occasion four or five appeared. Each time they would slowly fade and eventually disappear. This occurred several times and when they would reappear they might do so in differing numbers and in different positions, sometimes in a triangular shape, sometimes stacked on top of each other, sometimes line abreast, etc. When the objects appeared they might stay illuminated 10 or more minutes."

Fields' wife thought the lights may have been ground-based, but Fields says he's certain they were airborne. The retired colonel spent close to 32 years in the military, flying F-16s as a member of the 188th Fighter Wing of the Arkansas Air National Guard.

"I'm certain it wasn't an aircraft [from Earth]," said Fields, who also ruled out the possibility of flares, saying they didn't descend like flares typically do. "It's not anything I ever had any experience with . ... They were some kind of energy or something."

Fields grabbed his Canon digital camera with 6 megapixel resolution to document what he and his wife were seeing, and snapped numerous images of the mysterious lights, which appeared white, yellow and orange.

He says the phenomenon lasted an hour and 15 minutes, and local news agencies have not published or broadcast any reports of what the couple witnessed. WND surveyed local police and sheriffs agencies, as well as Fort Chaffee, a decommissioned Army base in the region, and no one reported anything out of the ordinary.

"I just can't imagine other people didn't see it," Fields said, noting they appeared at times like a yo-yo at 5 to 10 degrees above the horizon.

Mysterious yellow lights in triangular formation seen Jan. 9 near Van Buren, Ark. The red lights at right are from a local radio tower (photo: Col. Brian Fields)

Earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune reported workers for United Air Lines said they saw a flying saucerlike object hovering "low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies."

That Nov. 7 sighting took place just before sunset about 4:30 p.m.

According to Tribune columnist Jon Hilkevitch, "All the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. They said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights.

"Some said it looked like a rotating Frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. All agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds."