Over the course of the next month I may be posting more blog articles. In case you do not follow #UFOTwitter or UFOlogy in general, many people in the UFO Community eagerly await the results of a Senate investigation into what the US Government knows about UFOs. Some are hoping for full Disclosure. Others anticipate lies and secrecy. Me, I am ambivalent.
Much progress has been made over the past few years in bringing this subject out of the shadows of conspiracy theory and into the mainstream spotlight. Four years ago I only mentioned my own UFO sighting to a few close friends and family. I never spoke openly about alien visitation. Writing this blog would have been out of the question for me. I did not even follow anyone on Twitter other than maybe a dozen friends from college. None of them was into UFOlogy.
Then, people like Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon began moving the ball forward, with the help of Tom DeLonge and others too many to list. I jumped into the fray and brought my story to the public. It was then in the two year period leading up to my appearance on Unidentified that I decided to finally dive into this thing head first.
About ISawOneToo.net
Two hundred thousand page views later, I am proud of what I did and what I have accomplished. Yesterday one of my kids asked me, "Are you famous?" I laughed and said, "Um... in certain circles, but not really." Only a few days earlier I had joked with someone on a Facebook UFO discussion group that my "15 Minutes of Fame" had recently expired. Fame was something I had not ever sought out; quite the opposite and I am glad it is about over. All I ever wanted in regard to my sighting was to find someone in government who would document what I experienced and alert their chain of command that we should be concerned.
We are being visited by people with the ability to move over restricted airspace at low speeds without any visible means of propulsion, completely evading radar. These same individuals then have the ability to zip off in a streak of light without any sonic boom. It was three decades ago that my colleague Mike and I saw this. It is still happening today, around the world.
I did finally get my chance to tell my story. It did not go down the way I had expected. I had always envisioned something like what you see in the movies where I would go into an ugly, lowest-bidder office building, be ushered into a small conference room with cheap metal furniture and no windows, and be questioned by a couple "Men in Black" with Steno Note pads. Maybe they would do something with my information and maybe they would not - I could see the notebooks going into a crate which would get wheeled into an enormous warehouse, like at the end if Raiders of the Lost Ark. But at least I would have done my part.
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| Mission Accomplished |
This fantasy was an alternative to a competing vision of me growing old without having ever told anyone about my encounter, other than my closest friends and family. Then, the fantasy ends with a guy like James Fox (who I had never heard of until a year ago, but someone like him) showing up to interview me shortly before I died.
The reality was, I never did get my chance to speak to someone currently in a government role but I am told that my story is known by those who need to know about it. Shortly after my episode of Unidentified aired Lue Elizondo and I exchanged a few texts where he said, "...you are making a difference! People in D.C. are watching!" OK, mission accomplished.
I assume that means that Marco Rubio and others who are behind the current Senate investigation have read the details of my encounter or at least watched my episode of Unidentified. It makes no difference to me how the information flowed to where it did. I am completely satisfied that it got there. I did my part.
In the two year interim between when I first reached out to Lue and my TV appearance I started writing. I did not know how those years would go but I did know that it was important to begin documenting what was happening. Sometimes, in the day to day struggle of life, extraordinary events can seem mundane. Indeed, most of the build up to Unidentified was a lengthy series of calls and emails with various producers and their assistants, scheduling and canceling meetings, elaborating on small details between business calls and teaching classes. These details would have been overlooked by most people.
I knew it was a big deal. Most people will not appreciate it today but years from now historians will want to know the timeline leading to Disclosure (assuming it indeed happens). What happened and how? My thinking was not that grandiose at the time. I did not know where this journey would take me. I just knew I had to document it. So I began writing. This blog was initially intended to be sort of a diary that I would share with the public. If a post got seven views I was psyched - people are reading it! Now, most of my posts get hundreds of views and some have thousands. I am no UFO Jesus but I am happy that some folks seem to enjoy my writing.
Given the pace of progress it was not long before I ran out of updates. But by that point I had begun opening up to a larger circle of friends about my experience. They introduced me to other UFO nuts like me and they introduced me to others. I also began following some influencers on Twitter and researching the subject of UFOs. This led me down one rabbit hole after another.
Much of what I initially encountered online was conspiratorial. Being an apolitical, rational person, with a strong proclivity for logic, I was immediately turned off by the conspiracy theories. My third blog article was about this. I was not sure if I was committing blasphemy in the UFO Community by taking a stand against people like Steven Greer, the subject of that article. Perhaps there would be repercussions. But I wanted to do what was right. If going against the conspiracy guys meant going against the audience I was writing for, so what! I was not looking to build a big following. I just wanted to share the truth.
Fortunately, it seems I made the right choice. It took a while to find others with a similar stance as me, but they are out there. Thousands if not millions of people view the topic of alien visitation with a purely scientific view point and they do not fall prey to conspiracy theories.
That, I decided, was my audience. I wanted to speak to people who were curious about UFOs but who did not believe in Bigfoot and demonic possessions. These people had questions. They probably had few others with whom they could discuss these questions. I had questions too. I wrote about those questions. Why do aliens hide from us? Why are we being visited now, more than ever? What is a day in the life of an alien? This quickly became an obsession for me. I wrote nearly every day for months.
Ridicule over UFOs
In the beginning I was not so concerned with reducing the stigma of reporting UFOs. If that has happened then I am happy to have contributed. God knows, I have faced my share of the results of this stigma. The reason I kept my experience to myself for so long was because of the ridicule Mike and I faced from our fellow soldiers immediately after our sighting. I never told my fraternity brothers or other friends back home. I do not even know if I ever even mentioned it to the girl I soon dated for four years afterwards.
Since going public, most people are kind to me about it. Some are fascinated and want to talk more about it, knowing that I am a credible and lucid person with an education, actively involved in my community. Others are skeptical; they may believe I believe what I saw but they are not so sure themselves. A few others are downright hostile towards any mention of visits to Earth by people from other planets. They can be cruel with their disdain for it. I recently had to defriend someone on Facebook, in part for publicly chiding me as an "alien" (amongst other trite comments) and for trying to rally others around his disdain for me, the guy who "sees UFOs."
Whatever... I actually do not care what people think about me for telling my story, nor should anyone else who has had some sort of encounter. People can believe you or not believe you. Again, I just wanted to get my info into the hands of someone who could use it. That is done. I can now resume my life. Also, one only needs so many friends. True friends will respect you. The others, the immature debunkers, you can do without. Besides, the tide is turning. Even former president Obama chimed on UFOs and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich added his two cents recently, further validating the subject. History will show that the debunkers were on the wrong side. I am content with that.
Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.
Thank you for your kind words. These small tokens make a big difference in people's lives, including mine.
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