On a sultry August night, a stillness hung over Adams Pond as Cliff Dyer struggled to fall asleep. The clock ticked.

It was 12 a.m., then 2 a.m.

A warm glow of headlights flickered on the opposite wall as a car hummed by, briefly distracting Dyer from the clock's ticks. Then all was quiet except the faint chirping of crickets. His clammy skin clung to the sheets.

Out of the murky depths of Adams Pond, a gigantic orb flicked on and flooded the room with a blinding white beam. Dyer jumped out of bed, startled by the blaring spotlight the size of a small barn hovering over the water.

Dyer knew he had to get up. He had to move.

He approached the window, and gazed out at the ominous orb levitating 10-feet over the pond. The orb then emitted a sound: a guttural whooshing of water that lasted only a few seconds.

The orb began to rise. Dyer darted downstairs to grab the video camera. He ran back to the window. While fumbling with the camera, he noticed the moon shined high above to the south, illuminating the low-lying clouds.

The orb continued its ascent, floating below the cloud line. He said no sound of propulsion or could be heard from the radiant glare. Dyer recorded the orb with trembling hands, often losing focus of the sight in his camera lens. Suspended 1,000-feet above the pond, the light drifted over Dyer’s house and gained altitude. At his final glimpse of the mysterious burst of light, he said, it was headed toward southeast Bristol.

The common response when Dyer told his story was that he must be “one of those crazies.” But talking with Dyer made it clear: he is not out to fool anybody; he believes there was something unexplained going on; and he is now trying to figure out what it was he saw.

When Dyer talked about the event, his tone was serious. His eyes grew wide, as if he were re-living it the event.

“I have no reason to lie,” he said. “If someone else can tell me what it was, and create exactly what I saw, then that will be the end of it.”

Working as a bouncer at McSeagull's Restaurant never afforded Dyer much shut-eye at night, and his mandatory sobriety on the job ensured he had not been drinking the night the orb appeared.

Dyer, who grew up in Dresden, said he has always been curious about aeronautics. He often went out to watch satellites soar over hundreds of thousands of feet above his house. He could also accurately pick out the type of military jet flying by when Brunswick Naval Air Station still operated.

For Dyer, the most perplexing part of the orb’s flight was he never detected any type of propulsion system driving the light. In the possibility that someone might have been messing with him, Dyer said, “They would have to had one of them giant Hollywood spotlights, and it would’ve had to been on some kind of hot air balloon.”

The only sound was something Dyer can’t compare to anything he’s ever heard.

“That was the most important part,” Dyer said.

“It was like someone dumped out a ton of water, and it lasted maybe a couple seconds.”

He said all the imitations he’s made of the sound still don’t compare to exactly what was heard that night.

Maybe it was kids playing with fireworks, Dyer said. At the closest fireworks shop, the owner told Dyer fireworks that fly are strictly illegal because of the fire hazard.

Thinking he exhausted all his efforts, Dyer ended up at Boothbay Channel 7 where the station manager Jonne Trees froze the footage and expanded the still shot of the orb. What they discovered startled them. A wide array of greens, blues, and red discharge was detected on the orb’s surface.

Trees provided Dyer with a better camera to record future sightings. Every night when the weather is clear Dyer set up a video camera, and reviewed the footage every morning, in hopes to catch shots of the elusive light.

Dyer said he was initially hesitant to talk to the Boothbay Register for fear of being labeled the town lunatic. “I also don’t want a bunch of nerds camping on my front lawn,” he said. “I just want to know what it was.”

Since August 6, Dyer saw the orb two more times around the north side of Adam’s Pond. Similar orbs have been reported at sea, as well as a natural phenomena called Will-O' the Wisp, which is a flame commonly observed ignited over gaseous, marshy areas. As of yet, no valid explanation has been presented.

Anyone who can provide an explanation of the phenomenon should call the Boothbay Register at 633-4620 or email rleighton@boothbayregister.com.