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.

a sister blogger (another one)

A few days ago I received a comment on a posting I wrote on St. Paddy's Day, it was from another blogger. For some reason, I was fascinated by her comments. I searched a little, found her site, read some of her work, sent her a note and soon we were emailing back and forth.

This is yet another blog where the author shares personal paranormal experiences, including UFO sightings and their heavy-handed implications. (Someday, I need to make a list of these blogs) I am still at a loss at how to label these experiences. Is she an abductee? Contactee? Experiencer?

The title of her ongoing blog is: IN A WORLD CRACKING OPEN - Endings & Beginnings.

She goes by the pen name Lucretia Heart, and her story is rich, complicated and utterly bizarre. Having been looking at this subject, long and hard, I gotta say most of the stuff in her story seems to match things I’ve heard, either in print or from people sharing these stories with me directly.

I was utterly drawn to this posting. Here’s how the story begins:

Late September 2006, at about 2 am, a strange, blond man, tall, broad shouldered, and handsome, walked right into our living room in the middle of the night. We were up and alert at the time because someone had awakened us out of a dead sleep by rapping loudly on our bedroom window. A few minutes later, while my husband, Gerick, and I were shakily trying to figure out what was going on, Big Blond Guy just opened up our front door and strode on in!

I knew him and his name was Ethan...

Bizarre things had been occurring ever since we moved into that cabin out in the Ohio woods: Grey alien visitations, poltergeist phenomena, and several close-up UFO sightings. It had been an interesting year, to say the least! But this walk-in by a tall blond dude was altogether a bigger deal, and I knew it.

Many years before, Gerick and I and several other abductees we knew of were apparently put on some sort of 'stand-by' status. We were all told the same thing: that we were prepared and ready now, so we'd mostly be left alone (except for brief check-ups) until "it was time."

Time for what? For something to start. Something big. Something that had to do with the whole world changing. . .

NOTE: This story has been featured in JAR Quarterly
(Journal of Abduction-Encounter Research)

Mike replies...
I’ll add that 2006 seems to be the year that I began to become more preoccupied with the subject. My interest had been simply the stuff of curiosity, a subject that I followed. But, from this point on (about 2006) it turned into an obsession, and heavy-handed synchronicities began to invade my life.

Here are two more postings from my sister blogger. To me, these follow up stories are an important addition to the Ethan story.

Lucretia writes, The Hippie Visitor:

(she shares this) The following I wrote before meeting a guy named "Ethan" in a 2006 experience. I don't think they're the same guy-- but I could be wrong. I'm still confused about this one...

Mike replies...
Anyone who has read SIGHT UNSEEN by Budd Hopkins will immediately be reminded of the mysterious Mr. Page. The stories are eerie in their similarities.

Lucretia writes, A Letter To "Ethan"

I'm not sure what I'm trying to do here, exactly. I suppose I'm trying to imagine that if there were a way to communicate to "Ethan" (or whatever that mysterious yet familiar guy's name was who visited us in late September of 2006) I would dearly like to do so and would. I guess this is an exercise of my wishful imagination. But IF I could write to him, and have him read my writing, this is what I would like to say to that Angel/Alien/Faerie who came that night...

Mike concludes...
I could have made this post a LOT longer. My communications with Lucretia has been a tightly woven web of links to other ongoing synchronicities, including: The Irish, women with long red hair, the number 33, tall Nordic beings, Budd Hopkins and a deep premonition about our future.

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comrades

The blogisphere confounds and impresses me, and here's another example.

As a follow up to my previous post about my two sister blogs, I’ve found my brother blog, PARANORMAL MUSINGS, created by Canadian film maker Michael MacDonald. Both our blogs are focused on weird paranormal stuff, much of it personal.

We’ve commented on each others posts, e-mailed, and even spoken on the phone since meeting through our blogs, with the initial conjoint link being Mac Tonnies and his blog POSTHUMAN BLUES. Michael found my blog (and made a comment) on March 10th, one week after my first posting.

There are a bunch of curious similarities between Michael and myself. And I don’t know what else to do but list 'em, so here goes:

* We are both named Michael.

* We both have (beautiful) Scottish last names.

* I am 46 and he is 47.

* My list of labels on this blog have both "paranormal" and "musings" as a quick link to the posts.

* Both of us are involved with a documentary project on the subject of UFO abduction phenomenon. His film INTRUDERS, is completed but mine (alas) is on hold. We were working on them at the same time. We’ve each interviewed Budd Hopkins, Dave Jacobs and Leo Sprinkle. When he described his film during our phone conversation, I started laughing.

* We both are big fans of Mac Tonnies.

* We are both cat people.

* We are both creative types (and we’ve both worked on a lot of TV commercials).

* We both have curious memories, and we are blogging and sharing our odd personal stories in a very public way.

* And - His blog was started on March 2nd of this year, and I started my blog March 3rd, the very next day.

Am I reading too much into this? I can’t help it, these similarities fascinate me.

Michael MacDonald actually commented on my posting

The Neuron-like Nature of the Internet, as I was adding his picture to this post.

He wrote: Interesting, as I was reading along it made me think of my Ackerman 000 experience, and you actually posted an excerpt. I think the internet in its vast and complex interconnectedness becomes the equivalent of a web-based-style of quantum slit test. In a similar fashion I have often wondered whether systems on the edge of stability, such as an electric light bulb about to burn out, are primed for influence by entities such as ghosts, spirits, and even aliens, if they do exist in the paranormal realm as we suspect.

trying to capture a memory with a pen

This image was drawn as a quick little sketch in about 1994. I added the grey tones, using a computer, in 2008. Click on the drawing for a hi-res view.


This drawing represents the same 1993 memory in the posting below.

Here's the story of this drawing. For obvious reasons, that faint memory out my window bugged me. And, maybe about a year after the 1993 night-time event (maybe more) I doodled this little drawing on a page with some other scribbles. I didn’t dwell on it, I just quickly sketched it, and I remember thinking, "Ewww, that's kinda creepy."

And, I promptly put the drawing away in a drawer and forgot about it.

About a year ago, I found it again. It had been well over ten years since I had drawn it. It was just a little sketch, merely black ink lines on a piece of white paper. The memory was of a dark room, and the drawing didn't capture that. So I scanned it onto my computer and added some B&W tones. Using photoshop to create the darker image, with the bight light outside, seemed to accurately capture my dim recollection. The memory was of five spindly entities, I am sure of that, but the drawing only shows only two.

The much more precise follow-up drawing (in the post below) was created last summer in a sort of compulsive flurry.

After coloring in the little sketch, I realized I simply had to finally draw up another more detailed picture. It had been bugging me, and I've avoided doing it. But I needed to do this drawing. So, I forced myself to sit at my desk and I finally drew this more detailed image. Please understand, this was not an easy process to draw, I felt anxious and obsessive as I put the ink on the paper.

The final illustration feels pretty close. I clearly remember five entities, and they were lined up in the snow. But this drawing seems a little TOO tidy, I don't think it was so orderly, they weren’t standing in such perfect sync. And, I feel like I saw them walking, but I can't be sure.

The back lighting is pretty much the way I remember it. It seemed to flood into the room.

* * *

I’ll add that there have been a series of comments from people who have read the post below. They (quite correctly) point out that this could be some sort of dream state that I am confusing with reality. Sleep apnea or a hypnogogic hallucination are appropriate terms. Please know, that I recognize that potential, and my logical mind would agree completely. But, the “metaphysical” side of my mind is quite conflicted. I simply can’t allow myself to declare this memory as real or imagined. It seems weirder than either.

I’ll also add that I never looked in the yard for any evidence. It would have been very easy to just walk outside and look at the snow. I didn’t do that, at the time I forthrightly dismissed it as a dream, so why would I?

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looking out my window at night

Drawn from memory. Click on the picture for a high resolution image.

I am attempting to recount a very short memory. The incident described in this post lasted, maybe, less than 20 seconds. The implications of this event has been difficult for me to integrate into my life. I’ve been terribly conflicted about the truth of this foggy incident. It could have been a dream, true enough. I cannot allow myself to discount that.

In January or February of 1993, I was living alone in a small house in rural Maine. I had been dealing with a hard break up, and I was in an fragile emotional state, and this is an important factor in this story.

The driveway of the house had one of those motion sensitive lights, and it was pretty common for the light to come on when a car drove by or a deer walked through the front yard at night. The bedroom window faced the driveway, and my bed was up against that window.

I was depressed during that chapter of my life, and sleeping poorly. But I woke up that night because a very bright light was shining in through the window above the bed. I sat up, propping myself up on my elbow, and looked out the window. I saw five spindly entities with skinny bodies and big black eyes. They were on the lawn walking toward the house. They were back-lit by a singular round bright shape. This light seemed oddly small.

My first drawing, done as a way to get my thoughts down on paper, and then hidden away in a drawer.

My response to this frightening image was to nonchalantly lay my head down on the pillow and promptly fall back asleep.

Shouldn't I have jumped out of bed screaming in terror? But instead I felt absolutely empty of emotion. It was almost as if I was somehow controlled. I calmly thought to myself, "Oh yes, they're here, let's just shut down and black out."

The illustration (above) seems to capture the memory as close as I possible.

Now, it’s important that I add this extra information. This memory is strangely vivid in a way that seems entirely different form a normal state of mind.

I saw something, but at the same time I truly do NOT think it happened in “this” reality. That may sound hard to grasp, but it is the only way I can honestly depict the experience.

It’s important to me that I try to describe this feeling.

Hmmm - how to use words - weirdly quiet - sort of a pressurized fish bowl - the deepest part of my psyche is displaced, and moved to the forefront - maybe the normal thought chatter in my head is turned off - maybe - kinda - sorta...

A distinct warping of my psyche, whatever that means.

This strange warped feeling shows up again a few years later as a key element in a funny dream involving a UFO.

Did it happen while sleeping, and I simply imagined everything? Was it just some sort of dream state? Maybe. That would be an easy way to sum it all up. I’ll add that, because of this strangely vivid state of mind was so weird, I do not fully trust this memory.

The next morning I had the image seared into my mind, and I could NOT imagine something so weird could be true. I simply dismissed it as some sort of dream. I will add that I don’t recall ever dreaming I was in my own bed. My dream imagery will always be somewhere else, never in surroundings that are exactly like my bedroom.

Could my fragile emotional state been a factor in this vivid image out my window? Was I simply so depressed that I created this scary delusion in my weakened mental condition? That night, was I somehow more susceptible to such a weird hallucination? Maybe.

This memory has a series of follow up stories. And each one is, for me, quite perplexing. I will continue to post more about this very curious event.

*     *    *

I try and articulate the process of doing two drawings of this event in this follow up post.

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Text added Oct 31, 2009

The night of this event I was reading Budd Hopkin's book INTRUDERS. It was right there on the bed, probably just inches from my pillow. This might subtract from the potential reality of the experience. I mean, this book is filled with scary descriptions of skinny gray aliens, and my fragile mind was obviously filled with that imagery as I fell asleep. Did these vivid images well up as some hypnogogic dream? I have no idea.

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Text added March 25th 2010

This is something that feels funny to try and articulate, and I didn’t add it when I posted this thing a little over a year ago.

I remember looking out my window, and looking past the five skinny beings, and being drawn to look at that light out in the small open field surrounded by tall trees along side my driveway.

I thought the light was unusually small, maybe the size of refrigerator. The bright light in the yard looked, to me, just like a movie light mounted on a very short stand, pointed right at me, and into my window.

I've drawn it (above) to match my memory. 

Now, here's where it gets weird. This matches a scene from the feature film COMMUNION, based on Whitley Streiber's book. There was a lot movie that bothered me, BUT, there was a scene where the actor Christopher Walken (playing Whitley) walks toward a bright light in a forest setting.

approx. 1:30:20 time count in the movie COMMUNION

In the film, it is supposed to be an alien craft, but if you look carefully, you can see it's just a big movie light pointed at the camera. When I saw this during the movie, I thought to myself: "Oh, that's a simple way to create this special effect."

I saw the movie sometime in the summer of 1992, and “seeing” the light out my window would have been early in 1993.

When I saw the bright light from my bed out the window, I literally saw that same kind of movie light, just like in the film, and I remember thinking, in those few seconds: "Oh, that's a simple way to create this special effect." I had a similar reaction when I saw the movie. I simply dismissed this as perfectly normal. There was nothing at all unusual about a movie light in my yard in the middle of the night, but at the same time - it was very odd.

Where do I go with this?

Is this just proof that it was nothing more than a dream? Or, did "they" somehow create a screen memory? It seems like “they”quickly scanned my brain, picked a screen image from the files in my memory banks, and implanted the image of the movie light. Okay, just typing that previous sentence was hard, what I wrote is a big leap, but it feels accurate.

Am I using this "movie light" image to reinforce my own belief that nothing happened, and it was just a dream. Or, is the overt sense of a screen memory telling me that something very strange actually happened?

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Here’s an email excerpt from Mac Tonnies:

“Sure, your recollections aren't as inexplicable or dramatic as some, but you've never claimed that they were. (I think I mentioned this in a comment on my blog, but I tend to think the episode with the five Grays really *was* a sort of waking dream, as I've experienced similar phenomena myself). But the point is that you're not making unsubstantiated claims and that your take on the UFO counterculture is articulate and worth hearing, even if one happens to disagree with it.”

I agree with Mac on some level, I think this didn’t literally happen, but I simply don’t know. That said, 18 years later, the memory still haunts me.

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Text added Oct. 2nd 2013
Presently, I feel that this event truly happened. I came to this conclusion because of that sensation I tried to describe in the essay above. I say this after some serious self examination of my own memories. That altered reality feeling has happened tome several more times, and each time it was very much part of a UFO memory. I wrote about these other experiences and how I reluctantly came to this conclusion, liked in a post titled Hyper-vivid Distorted Consciousness.

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Teton crop circle

Teton Idaho, 2002

This is an event from the summer of 2002. This was the weekend that the movie SIGNS premiered, with crop circles as part of the plot.

It was mid-day and I was at my desk doing the mundane stuff of my everyday life, and I had this sudden flash. I thought to myself: We need a crop circle here, that would be so fun, and it would really shake things up.

This thought just emerged in my mind out of nowhere. And the idea seemed have a simple sort of playful tone. It was just a nice thought.

The next day, I saw a friend on the street here in Driggs. We chatted for a little while and then she offhandedly added, “You know that a crop circle appeared in Teton last night.”

What?

I was surprised, and I asked her for any details. She had actually just returned from visiting the circle. It was outside the little town of Teton Idaho just a few miles away. I realized that I needed to go visit this thing. And within minutes I bumped into another pal, a fellow named Jeff and told him about it. Without any hesitation, we both hopped in my little Subaru, and we drove to the area. Jeff has been a friend from my little town since I moved here, and he is a good sounding board for all things paranormal and conspiratorial. We are strangely similar in our fascination with this fringe stuff.

When we arrive a the circle, there were a lot of cars parked along side the little country road, and a lot of people milling around. We looked up onto a gentle little hill and we saw an obvious pattern of circles in the field of wheat. We hop out of the car and we immediately meet a very attractive woman. We start talking and she says she is doing research. She has a series of little plastic ziploc bags filled with soil samples and crop samples all labeled and organized.

Then, and this came out of nowhere, she announces that she is working on a book about UFO’s. I was a little surprised, because she sort of changed the subject - and it was a topic I was extremely interested in. I asked what it was about, and she went on to say that it was a collection of curious and funny stories associated with the UFO phenomenon.

Then she said something very interesting, “I am not sure of the title, but I know what I want the cover to look like. I want it to look just like a comic book cover from the 1950’s with exaggerated hand-lettering and drawings of people reacting to flying saucers in a cartoony sort of way.”

She went on, “I know exactly what I want, but I haven’t found an illustrator yet.”

With that, Jeff lets out a big belly laugh.

I pull out my wallet and hand her my business card. I say, “Well, you don’t have to look anymore, because I’m the guy.”

Now, I don’t know how much you (the reader) knows about me and my illustration style, but EVERYTHING that I draw seems to look like it’s stuck in a comic book from the 1950’s complete with exaggerated hand-lettering. So, this was more than a little bit coincidental.

Again, this synchronicity had a tone of playfulness.

I encourage you to follow up with another blog. Read a story about this same crop circle by the researcher noted above, she describes seeing a small disc shaped UFO above the formation as she was making measurements. [click here] The post is dated March 3rd, 2009.

And here's a link about this formation, [click here] for a write-up on the research from the UTAH UFO HUNTER'S website.

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