Red light travels across Bellingham, Washington, sky and vanishes.

I observed a single bright red light, slightly larger than a standard bright star, in the eastern night sky at approximately 9:45pm Pacific Standard Time on Thursday, August 18, 2011.   At first I thought the light might have been an exceptionally clear and bright Mars, but I realized quickly that the light was too vivid and bright to be a planet and called my cousin outside to witness it with me.  The light seemed stationary at first, at about 50 degrees above the horizon, but then slowly moved northward.  While the light traveled north, it may have changed speed a few times.  It also pulsed quickly all the while, like a star; between slightly more bright and slightly more dim.
As it neared the north sky, the light began an exponential decent towards the horizon and flickered between much brighter and very dim.  Around this time my cousin thought he may have heard a sound like a plane crashing to the earth.  Then the light simply vanished at about 20 degrees from the horizon and was not seen by us again, even though we watched the sky for 5 to ten minutes afterward.