My friend and i were standing outside her house having a smoke and saw a huge purple light that lit up the entire night sky. it was distinct from lightning in the way that it lit up the sky uniformly, and seemed to come at an extremely high speed from somewhere above the clouds. there was a loud dong! noise, like a large hollow metal object hitting the earth, and then my friend said she smelled something like a burnt chemical (i have a pretty weak nose and hardly picked it up). very strange, haven't found any other reports about it but we definitely experienced this!