The following written confession was submitted via email:

This happened in late summer / early fall of 2009, in central Utah. At the time, my father and I had been getting into caving. There was a cave system in central Utah which we had been exploring every week or other week for several months. We would bring different groups and lead them through these caves. It was a lot of fun. One day, we decided to go out, but for whatever reason, chose to go at night. These caves were way off the beaten path, so it would take about 30 minutes of driving on dirt trails to reach the cave opening. On this part of the drive, it was my father and I in the front seat of the car, with 3-4 others in the back.

It was fully dark at this point so we were driving pretty slowly along this trail. All of a sudden, we saw what looked like a shooting star coming from left to right. However, this "star" suddenly reversed direction and slowed down. it ended up making a shape like a Z in the sky. The first turn of the Z was curved and somewhat gradual. At the bottom point of the Z it paused for a fraction of a second, then it flashed to the right and was gone. It moved crazy fast. Like I said, the first section, it looked like a large shooting star, about that brightness and speed. Then it slowed down, even coming to a brief stop. However, on that last leg, it was a flash and gone. Like, we could still see the streak it left behind in the sky, but it moved so fast and was past the horizon in the blink of an eye. After it was gone, my father and I were both quiet for a second, then he turned to me and asked, "Did you see that?" No one else in the vehicle was in a position to see it, but he and I discussed it for quite a while.

I am a pilot, have flown fixed wings in the past, and work as a helicopter pilot now. So while not an expert on all of the aircraft out there, I do have a decent understanding of how aircraft work. The speed at which this thing changed direction, and flew in general, was inconsistent with anything I have ever seen.