Last summer, 2020, I had the good fortune to be included on a TV show about military service people who had witnessed UFO sightings. The show was called Unidentified. It was exciting for me to see my story told to an international audience. This was not why I did the show, in fact I never wanted any publicity from this event. I had kept it somewhat of a secret between me and a few close friends and family members for three decades. Nevertheless, it was indeed exciting to see myself on TV and to hear my story told.
Not long after the show's airing I received a few calls and emails from friends telling me, "I Saw One Too," as it were. One of them stood out because it came from a very credible person whom I had not spoken with, other than on social media, in probably ten years. She is an educated, senior-ranking professional with a major corporation. I have known her since the 1990's and we have dozens of mutual friends. I have no reason to doubt this person or her stories.
Yes, stories, plural. I do have skepticism when I hear that someone has had multiple UFO experiences. What are the odds? I had one close encounter, out in a forest while guarding an ammunition cache on a military base. There are numerous reasons why I was in the right place at the right time. There is no reason anything like this would ever happen to me a second time. Most people never have one encounter. Why is it that some people would have two or more?
Skepticism notwithstanding, I approach every conversation about a sighting with an open mind. After all, my story itself is unbelievable to anyone who has not gone down the #UFOTwitter rabbit hole. Who am I to say that my story is true and all others are not. I want to listen and learn. Maybe there is some good information that should be shared with others, like the YouTube interview I did about cops and aliens.
The subject of this blog post today wanted to keep her anonymity. That is the main reason I have kept this to myself for the past half year. Also, I was waiting for the right time to tie it in with some analysis and further pontification. That time is now.
Red Flying Orbs
I will call my friend "Mrs. Grey" to protect her identity. Our call started off the way any call between two old friends would start. How you doing? Good! How you doin'? OK! OK! How are the kids? Good, how are you? Busy working... I saw your show...
One of Mrs. Grey's stories was about several lights that came out over a field in Somerset County, New Jersey around dusk every night in the summer of 2007. The lights were red and about the size of the globe at the World Trade Center. I asked if she meant the one that was moved to Battery Park. She said yes. We guessed it was somewhere between twenty and thirty feet (7-10 meters) in diameter. There were multiple witnesses. One night there was some interaction between the lights and a motorcycle rider.
I asked if Mrs. Grey thought the lights were some kind of being or some kind of craft or ship. This question seems to have never occurred to her. She could not answer. She seemed to think they were looking for something or gathering information, "Just checking it out." One thing she was certain of was, "They could see me, I could see them."
There was nothing conclusive about this but it was interesting to listen to my friend recount her memories.
The better story, the one that gave me a slight chill took place in the spring of 1978 outside Allentown, Pennsylvania. Around age sixteen, Mrs. Grey and her friend were driving down the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading home from a drum and bugle corps show. There was much less light pollution at the time, making it quite dark in that part of the state. She says you could see the Northern Lights, it was so dark. "And all of a sudden... this... sphere..."
Mrs. Grey's friend noticed a light coming up on the two girls from behind them and said, "What the hell is that?" It was colored, more like a taillight than a headlight. Then, one light became two. The girls freaked out. They sped up. The lights sped up. This continued for several miles. Then the lights were, "Boom, gone!"
All these years later, Mrs. Grey says, "It was bizarre. It was bizarre," almost doubting her own story. I asked if the lights dissolved or disappeared. She said they flew away, "You know, up and out."
Over the years, Mrs. Grey would see her friend and ask if she remembered the incident. The friend would reply, "Yup, I remember that night." Other than that, she had never told anyone this story until calling me.
We talked more about the lights. "It was just these round, red, spheres. That's all I can say," Mrs. Grey continues. "I guess they could see our red taillights; maybe they thought we were their friends?" The lights were probably about the size of a basketball, small enough that she could not imagine there was anything (or anyone) in them.
To clarify, I asked if they looked like the size of a basketball in the mirror or they were actually the size of a basketball. Mrs. Grey confirmed they were the size of a basketball. She knows because at one point the lights actually came up on either side of the car. At this point, Mrs. Grey struggles to describe what she saw. "You couldn't see... I'm not going to say you couldn't see through it. You could see through it but..." She fumbles through the words in her mental thesaurus, "Opaque," and "Translucent," discarding both before settling on, "Milky. But red." It was bright. "To me, it felt like it was energy," Mrs. Grey offers.
I asked if she had a good feeling or a bad feeling about it at the time. She said good. Were you scared? She indicated the girls were a little scared but the lights approached them too quickly to have had time to think anything other than, "What the hell is that and how long is this going to be here?" Then when the lights went away the girls were left dumbfounded and curious. "Intrigued," is the word Mrs. Grey uses.
Because there were two incidents, I asked Mrs. Grey if she thought there was something significant about her. She said no, she was in the right place at the right time. Going back to '78 she returns to the thought about being the only ones driving on a very dark road in a big car with red taillights. Maybe the lights following them identified with her taillights. It is clear she has thought about this many times over many years, just as I have about my own incident. She is not sure what drew the lights to her car but keeps coming back to the color of the lights and her taillights and that perhaps there was a feeling of kinship on the part of the flying orbs.
The lights moved at the same speed the car did. Mrs. Grey did not think it was anything man-made. She could not determine if they were beings or crafts - maybe both. But they were definitely not something from Earth, "yeah, like, 'Oh, UFO...'"
Oddly, I remembered my mom had told me about UFO sightings on the Pennsylvania Turnpike during that same time period. She did not personally see anything but remembered hearing about it on the radio on a night when she and my dad were driving down that same stretch of road. I asked her about it afterwards but we could not conclude definitively that there was any connection to Mrs. Grey's story.
I mentioned to Mrs. Grey that she was not the only old friend to tell me a sighting story now that people know about my story. She replied, "We live in a big old fat galaxy - people are really stupid to think we're the only ones here. With all these planets??? Come on, now."
We continued talking about other UFO incidents for a while and wrapped up with a chat about my real favorite subject, skiing. We made loose plans to meet up during the ski season sometime. I agreed not to use Mrs. Grey's real name if I ever published any of this.
Are Humans like Dolphins to Aliens?
One of the first blog articles I wrote in 2018 analogized humans to aliens the same way dolphins relate to humans. In other words, perhaps humans are like dolphins to aliens, I wrote. In each instance, a ship full of intellectually superior beings floats overhead, sometimes abducts one of the lesser beings, and shoots off at incredible speeds.
I got thinking about this dolphin analogy again after hearing my friend Mrs. Grey's story. I remembered how I took the family to Key West a few years ago. We drove over the Seven Mile Bridge to the southern most point in the continental United States. We made some of our favorite memories.
Key West is known as a party town, the Bourbon Street of Florida. There are more bars on one block than in my whole town. My family did not partake in these festivities. One of our plans in The Keys was to swim with dolphins. That sounded like a lot of fun. It is also pretty expensive and we began having moral issues debating how humane it is to do that. In the end we opted to go on a dolphin-watch boat ride instead. But still, many people do this swimming-with-dolphins thing. Why?
Why do people like to swim with dolphins? Well, they are cute, for one thing. They are incredibly smart, for animals. They seem like animals we would like to befriend and make pets out of. They are like dogs but wetter - probably smarter too. Maybe we could make a connection and be friends! Swimming with dolphins sounds like a lot of fun. I am told it is.
When Mrs. Grey tells me her story about red flying orbs I am reminded of other stories. I think of Foo Fighters, shadowing early fighter planes. I think of the similarities between the stories. The lights appear out of nowhere, like humans do to dolphins. They seem to tag an airplane, or in Mrs. Grey's case, a car. They fly along at the same speed as the plane or car, maintaining a certain distance. Maybe to a flying orb, following us around is like swimming with dolphins. It is fun. It makes great memories. Maybe they could even make a connection with us and be friends!
Earth just may be the last habitable planet in the Continental Milky Way. We do not know. We are definitely not at the center of the galaxy. Perhaps Earth is the Key West of the Milky Way and we are like dolphins to aliens.
Does that make Earth a party planet? Every answer spawns a new question.
Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.
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