bright orb seen by Natascha

The red marker is the location of the campsite, and the blue marker shows where Natascha encountered the bright orb. These two points are approximately 1,500 feet apart. Google maps image, double-click for HI-Rez view.

This is a report of something highly unusual. In the very early morning hours of March 3rd, I was sleeping out under the stars with my pal Natascha. We were both lying in the desert sand in a very isolated corner of southern Utah.

We had been to the multi-day UFO conference in Phoenix, and we were taking the scenic route to my home in Idaho. We had been driving and hiking throughout the day, and we set out our sleeping bags just a little bit after sunset. Instead of getting a hotel room, we chose to camp just off the (very beautiful) Burr Trail Road, about 8 miles east of the little town of Boulder Utah. The map of Utah (below) shows our location with a blue marker.

Natascha had recently arrived from Germany, and she was still feeling jet-lagged, so she couldn’t sleep. She got up out of her sleeping bag at about 2:AM, and tried to do some work on her computer in the front seat of the car.

After a while, she felt cold and took a walk on the road with just the stars for light. This is a very narrow road with almost zero traffic, especially during these early morning hours.

I’ll add that during this time I simply lay in my warm sleeping bag near the car.

Here is her (slightly edited) description of the curious events that followed:

I woke up, thinking it might be about 4:AM (it wasn't, it must have been 2:15 or so). Mike didn't want to get up yet, but I was wide awake. I spent some time looking up at the stars and although I felt nice and warm in my sleeping bag, I just couldn't go back to sleep again.

I finally decided to get up to sit in the car and work on the computer for a while.

It was still quite early (approx 3:30) when I went back to Mike, complaining that I'm cold. He said, he won't get up before the sunrise and that I could go for a walk. I said: "I will get lost in the darkness." He said: "There is the road you could take."

So I went for a walk on the road. It felt good to move. I didn't use my headlamp, the ambient light from the stars was enough. After a short time my eyes adapted to the darkness and I could see where I was walking. The road went uphill towards a huge rock feature. I enjoyed walking in the stillness, there was a dark beauty to my surroundings.

But there was more, I could sense something, almost like a buzz in the air, like the air wasn't empty, there was some sparkling. It felt like I could sense energy. I have this sensation once in while, but here in the darkness and this place of pure nature it felt like I had a heightened ability to "see" more than we usually do. My sensations were enhanced.

I was thinking about this heightened sensation when all of a sudden I saw something very unusual: there, about 150 feet away, close to the ground on the right side of the road was a bright light. It flashed, so I just saw it for a second or so. It was round, like an orb and it was so bright that my first thought was that there is somebody with a very bright flashlight. But it didn't make sense, it just flashed and it was very close to the ground.

Next thought (my mind went crazy, because I wanted an explanation), maybe it was a lightning bug? But the round light was much too big, like two feet in diameter. And shortly after realizing that there was no way I could explain this thing, I started to panic. I turned on my heels and ran back to Mike, looking over my shoulder once in a while because it felt like I was followed.

When I arrived at Mike lying on the ground I woke him up, telling him that I saw a bright light like an orb and that I'm scared and that I won't walk around alone anymore. Well, that made him get up.

I have no idea why I was so scared, and I was relieved that we finally packed up and drove away.

(Natascha's entire report, without editing, has been added to the comments below)
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Mike again, chiming in with a little bit more:

While Natascha was walking on that road, I was snug in my sleeping bag drifting in and out of sleep. During this time I heard an owl hooting, over and over, and it was quite close to where I was lying. Here's an audio clip of the very distinctive call of the Great Horned Owl.

Let me add that the night was perfectly lovely, calm and very quiet. The temps were quite chilly, and we both got a lot of frost on our sleeping bags. We saw one car drive down the road shortly after sunset, but as far as I could tell, that was the ONLY car that night.

And - While typing up this post, I got to where I was writing about Natascha's memories, and I felt a little bit presumptuous writing about her direct experiences. And at that exact moment, I received an email from her (while she was sitting in a coffee shop at the Charles Du Gaulle Airport) where she shared her memories. That text is posted above (typed in Arial), with minimal editing by me.

Desert sandstone in beautiful southern Utah, and the logo-image for this blog.