◆ PARALLAX

I am not really a forum person so sorry if this is the wrong place. My mum has described the same lights over the field behind our house since I was small -- three of them, low, that move together and then are gone. She is not frightened of them, she calls them "the watchers" and says it fondly, which honestly unsettles me more than fear would. She is not mad. She is the most sensible woman I know. I just typed it in to see if anyone says the same. Please be gentle, she does not know I posted this.

You are in exactly the right place and you did a kind thing. "The same lights, for years, that she is fond of and not frightened of" is its own category and we see it more than you would think -- often with older folk who have lived in one spot a long time. It is usually not distressing and very often never explained, and that is allowed to be okay. The fact that it unsettles YOU more than her is worth sitting with gently; sometimes the witness has made their peace and it is the family still carrying it. Be kind to yourself too. She sounds wonderful.

Gentle and boring follow-up because someone should: three low lights in fixed formation that "move together" are worth a couple of dull checks before anything else -- a distant set of masts with aircraft-warning lamps, a farm or pylon line on the far side of the field, headlights on a road that dips. Not to take anything from your mum, who clearly has a long relationship with whatever they are, but if it IS one of those, you will sleep better, and if it is NOT, you will have something genuinely odd. Either is fine. Most of mine turn out to be masts. Some do not.