Giant hornet or bee?

This would be a TOTALLY off topic page.

At our building for at least 2 nights we have had a giant bee or hornet hanging out on our outside light. This insect is about 2 inches long. The first night we didn't take any photos. The second we did. Ok, it wasn't me, it was Barry as there is no way you could get me outside even with a camera to take pictures of this monster!

Our question is this: What is this thing? We have looked up different bee and hornet species but just can't imagine that the big species that we found would be on our lamp in Pennsylvania!

Any help on what this thing is would be greatly appreciated. I will try to put up scale photos of the lamp shortly so you can see the gigantic size of this thing.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

Ok, looks like this monster is a hornet. I'm still waiting on confirmation of what kind. It is either a European Giant Hornet or an Asian Giant Hornet. I'm going to go with the more likely of the two for right now and that is the European variety. If it is the other, we would have to kill them.

UPDATE: This page has had more response than anything we have ever put up on our little web site in 6 years now.

We have determined that this is definitely a Giant European Hornet. You can get more information on this particular hornet here.

Thanks to all that have called in and emailed.  Still one really BIG bug!

Size of the lamp illustrated here.