One of the, sometimes, disturbing and delightful facets of our existence is the fact we never fully know what’s ahead. Oh, we can make educated guesses or predictions, claiming to have had enough experience in one field to know the possibilities, but, “Surprise”, hey it’s just around the corner.
Such was the experience waiting for us last night; one that still has me as excited as I used to get just before a football game in high school, or as giddy as a girl must feel getting ready for her first prom.
I have no problem with it. I’m high as a kite and nothing stronger than Power-Ade has coursed through my veins.
There are experiences that mystify you and those that truly terrify you, but there are also those that leave you with a Cheshire cat grin for days. This is one of the reasons I push so hard at times, here, for you all to truly join us in this work, one, admittedly, we have strayed from as of late. The event, yes event, was one I relish, mostly because as the 10th century Arab traveler (Ahmad Ibn Fadlan) states so often in his real records and Michael Crichton’s -The Eaters of the Dead, “I saw it with my own eyes.”
A portion of each of our outings is the attention to the sky over our vehicle as we travel, not a paranoid view but an acknowledgment of the reality we have experienced in the past. Last night was relatively clear. The Milky Way was visible, the vapory white among its constellations just beautifully there overhead. And it was in that very patch of sky it happened.
Around 7:30 we were on O-Highway, heading back north, and were looking for side roads to re-explore. I was leaning my head out the window looking up and started an experiment I often try. We believe that the regular pulses of our flash from the camera have in the past on multiple occasions, possibly attracted some sort of visual activity overhead. This is complicated to explain because the different types of phenomena have been quite varied.
In this case, I was just releasing occasional camera flashes straight up. I had, only in this quick view of the sky, taken two pictures. The first, with the flash, was of course of nothing. The second, taken just before this happened, also showed nothing. The flash setting was on auto with red eye reduction to remove the pink or purplish tint I was experiencing with other settings.
I Leaned out, not looking into the view finder, but holding the camera out away from my face, above it far enough up that I saw, not the fullness of the pulse of the flash as you would facing it , but only its halo or corona around the dark camera’s housing from behind and below.
I took this shot and the results were a as before, a bank screen filled with slightly tinted noise. But, what did happen was within a few seconds after the flash, maybe, just maybe, 2 seconds there was an answer from the sky. This wasn’t the tiny flashes or twinkles that YouTube is full of. It wasn’t a pin prick of light at a distance, or something in anyway comparable to a star. This was not a flash of light, a stretch of lightening like light. It was, instead, a concentrated circle of light at the end of my arm, possibly starting out 3 inches wide and pulsing out huge to 10 or 20 times that, still in a full circle of sudden light.
It had gone from 3 or 4 inches to, at my arm’s length, probably basketball size. The most interesting characteristic of this light was the fact that it had no point of dissipation towards the outer rim of its circumference. It was as solid and bright at its rim as it was at its heart, it’s very center, and if this makes sense, it seemed slower in coming on and going away, and it didn’t seem abrupt in its transition. The size I mentioned, when you guess at its expanse in the distant sky overhead must have been huge. The further away you would estimate it to be, seems to me, to only add to the reality of its size.
This, by itself, has me very excited, except it wasn’t the only sight of its kind. This same method used again twenty or so minutes later, likewise ended in a strange result. This time, holding the camera again as high away from my face as was sensible, lying my head on the window, sill looking up stretching my arm up, I let go a flash. In return, a second or two later, it was as though the light bounced off something or it was temporarily illuminated as it moved away.
There was a long object or source of a light’s glow or a reflective surface of that shape that was there suddenly in view and then gone like it moved quickly away. Possibly, in this case, the dull sort of light was a reflection, but why and what would there be that low over us with a tubular shape for light to rebound off of? With a light much different from the very intense warm white light of the earlier incident?
This was not the only oddity of the evening. We saw moving objects in the sky along the roadside and another bright light that resembled that of the one we chased or were accompanied by on F-Highway, a year or so ago, one we photographed and labeled the domino craft.
The evening, however, began with a strange fire, one just after the series of bridges on B- highway heading east in Rich Hill. When we came upon it at first I thought it was a telephone pole, but was wrong and as I bailed out and ran over to it was clear it was one tree. What was strange about this was that it was in a wooded area where no other trees or bushes were ablaze. The tree was ripped with flame down one side only, and there were portions of it surely broken off, scattered on the ground throughout this area, some quite a distance from this shattered tree of some size.
Another truck had just pulled up or was leaving, and the men in it said there’s nothing to it. It was just a freak thing that occurred occasionally and it was contained. Lori asked if the fire dept. was on the way, and they answered “why it won’t go anywhere”. I think my pictures show a scene a little less than in control, spread on in large burning chunks as though the top had been knocked off and strewn about.
I understand in nature that wild fires occur, that sometimes, for whatever reason, things ignite, but I also know something about the laws of gravity and for sizable chunks of burning wood to be strewn out over a 50 or 60 yard area from a single burning tree, one without a wide array of branches isn’t the regular pattern for a burning tree. Most usually drop their incinerated limbs around their base. They don’t cast them out over a wide area.
What am I suggesting? Generally it would be nothing, just a case of one more lesson about the misunderstood activity of nature, but I like to examine things within the frame of other events around them, to see if there a possible connection. Asking these questions isn’t a reach for the bizarre, an effort to take something out of the realm of the natural and sculpt a new framework for its place in reality. It is an attention to past experiences of others some quite famous that indicate that, often, when something is passing low through the night sky contact to trees occurs. If it was a small plane there would be proof of its place there among the fire that its wreck might have started. If it was a meteor, there is the chance it could have broken off a portion and scattered this about. It could have been hot enough to cause ignition in this contact and pieces aflame that dropped to the trees feet could have started the fire there.
In ufology, there are cases where a craft taking off and/or landing has caused fire where it passed too low over a section of woods and tore branches or the tops off. We know from the Betty Cash and Vicky Landrum case that great heat sometimes accompanies them. At a relative distance, their car became painfully hot to the touch. This, even as military helicopters descended around it and escorted it away.
Did a UFO cause the fire we found? It would be ridiculously irresponsible to assume it with so many other more natural origins for it? We have to also remember, not ten minutes away, the huge light was seen, this and other aerial objects we still can’t identify. It would be irresponsible, but in an ever increasing world of categorically fringe possibility, it must remain a viable theory none the less.