I was driving home from work on what I thought was a typical trip down I-40. As I approached the Highway 54 exit, I spotted a bright light in the distance, above the left edge of the road.

The light hovered in place, appearing to be a few miles distant. I thought it was simply a TV helicopter, out filming beauty shots of the traffic for the 6 o’clock news. My clock read 5:49, a bit early for news footage.

But then the light did something alarming. It began to drop quickly out of the sky. I blinked to make sure it wasn’t moving towards me and I was just seeing it wrong. But in spite of my doubt, it was doing just what I saw – dropping like a rock.

“Damn, that pilot is screwed,” I thought. I believed I was witnessing a helicopter crash, possibly one that was being transmitted live to the area’s televisions.

I blinked again. The helicopter couldn’t have lost power, since it wasn’t “autorotating” to the ground. If so, the light would surely be spinning around.

The light plummeted as I continued to drive. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished, blinking out a few degrees above the horizon. I squinted in that direction but could not find any trace of it.

It took me a while to decide that what I saw wasn’t the usual helicopter sighting. No sane pilot would drop a helicopter that fast. And there was no trace of it afterward. Very weird. I actually spent the rest of the trip scanning the horizon for signs of smoke plumes, on the chance I really did see a helicopter crash.

Thinking about it again tonight, I decided it could have been a flare. Why someone would shoot a flare into the evening sky is beyond me, as is how it could hover in one place as long as it did before dropping.

Chalk it up to a mystery. It’s my evidence that my idea of always having a camcorder in the car may be a good one.