WEST MICHIGAN (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - 911 dispatchers take all kinds of calls, but on this very day 15 years ago dozens flooded in that were just plain strange.

"Yeah, have you heard anything about these lights that are flickering up in the air?" asked one person on a 911 dispatch tape. "They look like a string of Christmas lights that go way up in the sky."

"Uh you might want someone to have somebody take a look, it's a different, I've never seen anything like it," said another person in another call.

"Alright this call isn't really an emergency, we're just calling about the UFO in the sky. They're out there. They ain't airplanes."

All along the lake shore, people reported strange lights in the sky.

The most reports came from Holland where people say they saw flashes of red, blue, white and green attached to cylindrical objects.

"I wasn't really a believer. I mean, I believe there could have been something out there. When I stepped out here on the patio Tuesday night it made me a strong believer." said Troy Prince in an interview shortly after the incident.

The National Weather Service picked up the objects on its radar. The operator in charge said three triangular "blips" were coming up, hovering over the Holland area. They traveled 20 miles in just 10 seconds.

Later the National Weather Service downplayed the possibility of UFO's. The dozens of people who saw the strange lights never got a logical explanation.

Now this fall the History Channel is taking up the story. It's running a segment on the Ottawa County sightings during the "UFO Hunters" program.