Has Anyone Else Seen Strange Blinking / Flashes in The Night Sky?

So I posted this in that great personal high strangeness thread yesterday, but felt it deserved its own thread since it’s been bugging me for the last few days. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.

Ok, so not sure how I’d classify this one, but I think it definitely is strange. On early Thursday morning, my brother, gf, and I were stargazing on the porch in Cape Cod, MA. There’s relatively little light pollution there, at least compared to where I live near the city, so we could see a fair bit more than usual.

As I was watching, I started noticing flashes / blinking lights. Some were brighter than others. Some would only blink once, some would blink a few times in several-second intervals. Sometimes I’d see them from my peripheral, and when I’d look over I’d catch the second or third flash. When they would flash in succession, they were completely stationary. I didn’t notice all of these in the same spot necessarily, but across the same general grid of sky I was facing, just different locations here and there.

I did my best to stay logical, but feel pretty confident in ruling out some simpler explanations. First, it wasn’t an area of heavy air traffic, we did see several planes that evening, but all were distinctly planes with navigation lights, etc. Second, there were absolutely no clouds throughout this session, so I’m confident ruling out heat lightning. Also having lived in MA nearly my whole life, I’m very well acquainted with the summer heat lightning here. Third, we were outside for several hours, and my eyes were well-adjusted to the dark, without any sources of light / shock to my eyes, so I feel I can discount it being an artifact of my eyes adjusting. Fourth, and this one I think is most plausible, they could’ve been satellites. We saw a number of satellites that night, but all were distinct dots (no flashing) moving across the sky in a steady straight line. I did see one flashing satellite, but it moved exactly as expected for a satellite flashing steadily the entire time.

What made the other flashes anomalous, was that they would flash in the same spot, with 3-5 second intervals, flashing maybe three times, and stop. Some time later, in another area, they would flash again, sometimes multiple times, sometimes just once. Throughout this, with my eyes well adjusted to the night sky, I would strain to look and see if I could see an object like a satellite moving around these flashes, but could see nothing despite watching the subsequent blinks. It was almost like they generated from deep space, blinking in and out.

I saw these consistently throughout my entire time stargazing, from about 12:30am - 3:30am. My brother and gf noticed as well, but they weren’t looking for it like I was.

Now here is the really woo-woo part, and a part I’m still not sure how I feel about now days later, but it SEEMED like these flashes would correlate with my thoughts. Having read about CE-5 ideas and not taking it too seriously, I half-jokingly started thinking things like “hey I’m here, if you’re out there show me something” and when I did, a series of flashes would catch my eye. This seemed to happen several times throughout the night, when I noticed a lull I would think “come on, show me just one more, just one more” and boom I’d see a blink.

I tried researching, but couldn’t find anything that quite aligned with or explained what I saw, like gamma rays or iridium flares. There was just something strange and unique about these.

I did come across this post on Reddit from 4 years ago, and was shocked to see a ton of recent comments within the last year noticing what I saw:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/czgqfi/can_anyone_please_explain_these_flashes_of_light/

I’m sorry for the absolute wall of text, but it’s been bugging me for days. Has anyone experienced anything similar?