Close encounters with the Juneau kind: Woman reports strange lights in Southeast Alaska skies

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – For Juneau resident Tamara Roberts, taking photos of the northern lights was just a hobby — that is until a different light altogether caught her eye.

Capturing what she’s called strange lights in the skies of Juneau near her home on Thunder Mountain, Roberts said she’s taken 30 to 40 different videos and photos of the lights since September 2021.

“Anytime I’m out, I’m pretty sure that I see something at least a couple times a week,” Roberts said. “I’m definitely not the only one that’s seeing them. And if people just pay more attention, they’ll notice that those aren’t stars and those aren’t satellites.”

Roberts has been a professional photographer for over 20 years. She said she changed interests from photographing people to wildlife and landscape when she moved to Juneau 13 years ago.

Once she started making late-night runs trying to capture the northern lights, she said that’s when she started encountering her phenomenon.

Roberts said not every encounter takes place above Thunder Mountain: her most recent sighting happened near the Mendenhall Glacier while her stepmom was visiting from Arizona.

“She’d never been here before, so we got up and we drove up there, and lo and behold, there it was,” Roberts said. “I have some family that absolutely thinks it’s what it is, and I have some family that just doesn’t care.”

Roberts described another recent encounter near the glacier she said was a little too close for comfort. While driving up alone in search of the northern lights, she expected to see other fellow photographers out for the same reason as she normally does.

But this night was different.

“I’ve gone up there a million times by myself, and this night, particularly, it was clear, it was cold and the [aurora] KP index was high … so as I’m driving up and there’s nobody there. And I was like, Okay, I’ll just wait and somebody will show up.’ So I backed up into the parking spot underneath the street light — the only light that’s really there on that side of the parking lot — and I turned all my lights off, left my car running, looked around, and there was that light right there, next to the mountain.”

Roberts said after roughly 10 minutes of filming the glowing light, still not seeing anyone else around, she started to get a strange feeling that maybe she should leave.

“I just got this terrible gut feeling,” Roberts said. “I started to pull out of my parking spot and my car sputtered. [It] scared me so bad that I just gunned the accelerator, but my headlights … started like flashing and getting all crazy.

“I had no headlights, none all the way home, no headlights.”

According to the Juneau Police Department, there haven’t been any reports of strange lights in the sky since Sept. 14, when police say a man was reportedly “yelling about UFOs in the downtown area.”

Responding officers said they did not locate anything unusual, and no arrests were made following the man’s report.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service in Juneau also said within the last seven days, no reports of unusual activity in the skies had been reported. The Federal Aviation Administration in Juneau did not respond.

With more and more whistleblowers coming forward in Congressional hearings, Roberts said she thinks it’s only a matter of time before the truth is out there.

“Everybody stayed so quiet all these years for the fear of being mocked,” Roberts said. “Now that people are starting to come out, I think that people should just let the reality be what it is, and let the evidence speak for itself, because they’re here, and that’s all there is to it.”

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