Are There UFO's Among Us?

Ever since the new Discovery series "Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking" began last week, there has been a lot of "buzz" about his statements concerning alien life. For those who do not know, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant British theoretical physicist and author from Oxford, England, who is stricken with a rare form of ALS which has enabled him to live for decades instead of years with the completely debilitating disorder that has made him almost completely immobilized in a wheelchair. He must use a special speech synthesizer with which to "speak" aloud.

During last week's installment, he said that he believed there was alien life out there somewhere, although it is far far away from earth as the planets scientists know about closer to us surely could not sustain life as we know it. In other words there are no mammals much less human-like beings with opposable thumbs who could actually build ships capable of traveling thousands of light-years to reach our solar system. He summed it all up by saying we should stop trying to contact them saying that it is very possible that they do exist somewhere, "They are likely to be more advanced than us . . . " and "So if aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."

Next the Larry King Show televised a show dedicated just to these statements about alien life and invited Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, another famous physicist and author, David Brin, an astronomer, Seth Shostak, Director of the Seti Institute, and actor and commediene Dan Ackroid who is a believer in UFO's and is a member of Mufon to give their views on the subject.

Dr. Michio Kaku is a brilliant man whom Rick Moran had spoken to on the telephone and written a training page on several months ago, and he commented that he disagrees with his colleague Stephen Hawking and believes that if they ever do show up here, they will be "benevolent" because they are thousands of years ahead of us if they could make it here and thus have learned lessons with which we as a species are still struggling.

David Brin and Seth Shostak believe that intelligent species do exist, but they again are much to far away from earth. Shostak, of course, wanting the Seti Insitute to continue to receive NASA grants and public donations, states unequivacably that if they are out there, their special radios would have picked up their signal (except that after 25 years of training the antennas to the skies, there has only been one odd signal that could not be identified decades ago that never repeated itself)! (Of course, he said they need more money and more time to reach farther and farther into deep space, and someday, they still hope to make radio contact with an intelligent species!)

Dan Ackroid says that they are already here, and that they have been here for a long, long time, but that the truth of the matter is that they don't really want to socialize with human beings on a grand scale because "We are not so nice." I have to chuckle at this because from all appearances on a global scale, that could be true.

The bottom line is, however, what about the credible people such as military, pilots, police officers, etc., since the 1940's who have seen "something" but to this day have no idea what they have seen because they have never seen it before that sighting or since?

In fact, more importantly, what about me, who along with my cousin, saw "something" when we were teenagers that neither one of us will ever forget for as long as we continue to live on this planet? In fact, the following sighting I'm going to write about is one of the reasons I became interested in paranormal phenomena and UFO's from that time to this day.

When I was 14 years old, I was staying at my grandmother's home in East Texas for a few weeks in the summer. (This is the same land that Rick Moran lived on when he died and where his wife Joi still resides and that he affectionately dubbed "The Dog Ranch"). My cousin Mick was also staying over that night. My grandmother had just gone to sleep approximately 30 minutes before, and we were still up watching television. Soon, whatever it was that was on became boring to my cousin so he stood up and walked out to the screened front porch to get some fresh air.

Within just a few moments, he excitedly and fearfully called my name. "Joy! Joy! Come out here quick!", he yelled. I immediately shushed him because I didn't want him to awaken our grandmother who I knew would come out to fuss at us if we disturbed her sleep since she had so many aches and pains, her slumber was hard won and thus was very important to her.

Again, he called my name, telling me that he was not joking and that I should come out there NOW! So I got up, rolling my eyes, walked out to the porch, and he pointed to the night sky across the road above a pasture. Immediately I lost my frustration with him and became both fascinated and terrified at the same time, and yet I could not move or look away from my spot.

Suspended in the air about 100 yards above the field, was a oval shaped object that I estimate was about 25 feet long which then literally began darting up and down, back and forth above the ground, wildly, and quickly -- one second it would be located in one spot and the next it simply was about 10 or 20 feet over in another spot. It did not travel through the air in a smooth path to the new spot; it was simply THERE!

The craft moved much faster than a helicopter ever could in that decade (the 1970's) or for that matter than any are now. In fact although my father was not a pilot, he did work for Braniff Airways, and I had already traveled to several states on airplanes, seen aircraft and helicopters take off, fly and land at Love Field Airport, etc. for years as he often took me there to watch them.

What we were also observing was a strobe-like light effect shine across the body of the object from right to left as the color of the object changed from white to blue to green to red and then back to white.

We were almost frozen to the spot in shock while we watched it in relative safety from behind the latched screen door. One more thing that we both noted was that the locusts had stopped making noise. In fact everything became extremely quiet outside -- no dogs barked, no wolves howled which seemed odd since it was almost 10:00 p.m. and in the middle of the hot summer time in Texas when it seemed that the animals and insects were their most loud. There was no noise at all outside except for a tiny beep that emitted from the object which almost sounded like the noise that a submarine makes under water which sounded off once every eight seconds because I actually began to count off between the sounds.

Finally, the object stopped moving, and I have to admit that I was afraid that somebody or something had noticed us and it would come even closer into the yard. But in a moment, the object starting traveling straight UP! I simply could not resist: I unlocked the door latch, and walked down the front steps and onto the stone path. I stood in the middle of the yard and watched the object as it ascended. I thought surely it would change directions and finally fly away across the sky horizontally, but it never did. It rose up until it became a pin-point of light and then simply winked out of sight. After the UFO was out of sight, the locusts began croaking again, and I heard a dog barking way off in the distance from another farm close by.

I walked back inside with my cousin quiet and stunned. I thought before I re-entered the house that it had only been about 5 minutes, but the local news show was well underway, and that is when I realized it had been at least 20 minutes between the time Mick called me outside and when we walked back into the house.

Now all these years later, every time a new series or special comes to television about UFO's, I ask myself again, "What did we see all those years ago before all of this powerful equipment was in place and before satellites were launched into space?" Was it some secret military device they were testing way out in the country so that others in more heavily populated areas would not notice? If so, how "on earth" in the mid-1970's could it travel straight up the way it did and look like a tiny star before it got so far away that the human eye could not see the lights on it any longer? Something that profound should eventually have made its way into regular use, and Americans should have eventually been made aware of it after it was declassified because I can tell you this: It looked like it was a very effective surveillance aircraft to us if it could hover, dart around, and then retreat into outer space!

Rick Moran hypothesized that if our scientists claim that aliens could not possibly be visiting the earth, then the only thing that still fits is alternate dimensions that sometimes "touch" right here on earth or even time travel. However, most of our current physicists say that that too is something that just cannot happen -- at least not in a way that lets us occasionally get a peak at a creature that does not "fit" here or a craft that simply cannot exist! So my questions remain, and although I hope we gain some insight eventually, they may never be answered in my lifetime. Some of us keep trying to find answers or something that just "makes sense" to us -- even in the face of ridicule or scoffing -- all because of a life changing event in our pasts that simply will never completely let us go.

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