FARMINGTON - Strange lights with no obvious cause were spotted all over northern Franklin County Tuesday night, Sheriff's Department dispatchers said.

"The phone was ringing off the hook," dispatcher Bill Hoyt said.

Multiple callers from multiple towns - New Vineyard, Wilton, Phillips, Industry, and around Mt. Abram - called to report bizarre, low-to-the-ground lights, he said.

"They were seeing, basically, a string of seven or eight lights low in the sky, that were fixed," he said. "There (were) also reports of jet engine noise low to the ground." One person who called worked with jet airplanes, Hoyt said. "They were not like any lights he had ever seen." Some people said they looked like stars.

Hoyt called a Federal Aviation Administration office in Boston, which monitors air traffic in this part of New England, wondering if what people saw and heard could be related to military exercises.

"They said the only air traffic was a couple of routine air flights at 40,000 feet," he said.

Hoyt doubts it was aliens.

"I think, personally, most of the time there's an explanation for everything," he said. "But you know, I don't deny the fact that people see things they can't explain."

"It was kind of odd," he said. "All these reports were from different locations at the same time. Maybe it was a meteorite."

The jet-engine sounds and the fixed-ness of the light pattern make him question that theory, though, he said.