Big Foot And Friends.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/mountainscape-mysteries-viva-anderson.html

This , Ron, was a mysterious moment in my life, there are no big-foots, just my own slight insanity, especially now, with this
crazy edition of the artwork. It all happened as I drew at a nearby hidden glade, during a plein air class. The mountain suddenly
spoke to me, I know, I know, weird, and I was quiet enough for a change, to listen. And it told me my story! That! is here, hidden,
a mystery to most who see this, but, seeing as you asked, here 'tis .......

"Do you include mystery in your work? Creatures? Any personal experiences with strange things?"

No, no, and no. Well, I've encountered some pretty strange people. There was one weird encounter in the mountains. I was hiking down the trail years ago, when all of a sudden some animal comes out of the bushes and across the trail maybe 20 feet ahead of me, stops, looks at me, then turns back and continues across the trail. The mystery there is what type of canine was that? Dogs aren't allowed in that canyon, it's a watershed. Coyotes exist in the area but are rare and it didn't really look that much like one. It most definitely was not a wolf, they don't exist in this part of the state and it didn't look like one. I researched it heavily and can still picture it in my mind but am still puzzled about it after all these years. Ya, I know, a pretty bland mystery. lol

Do we need the unknown? Or, do we fear the knowing or not knowing of something, as commonly stated, "fear of the unknown." Do we need that because it heightens and sharpens our senses? There are many things unknown that we chase the answers to yet the more we discover the more we want to know and the more questions we ask. The answers can be scary, but so can the questions. It is our quest to discover the answers nonetheless. Humanity's quest for knowledge. It motivates us. To know. We would never have left the surly bonds of Earth had we not had innate curiosity for what's out there. Alien creatures? Maybe Bigfoot is an alien. So, I actually think we WANT to know everything but whether we NEED to is another question. My work on the other hand, is always a mystery.

Shadows are mysterious. Shadows create a since of depth in a two dimensional image, but they also add a little bit of mystery.

The Pentagon last week was admitting that it has videoed UFO sightings. This was a week after April Fools.

They are serious.

Or the video of the experts was supposed to be a Pentagon joke released after April Fools by accident.

https://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-confirmed-video-showing-triangular-132753144.html


Dave Bridburg
Bridburg.com
Post Modern Gallery

I have three stories which I will toss into this thread but one at a time. This one is somewhat similar to Dave King’s one. I grew up in Ventura, Ca right below some hills. There was a drainage ditch and narrow road separating our house and the hills. This meant that the sound of coyotes and cows were frequent. Only one night there was a distant weird scream like sound. It kept getting closer and the sound repeated ever so often. Something was traveling down the drainage ditch. It let out a loud sound right behind our house and kept doing this till long past it. Not only that this repeated for nearly a week every night. It made the newspaper and it was speculated that it was some type of wild cat but after that week it was gone.

Ronald, my answer is YES, YES, and YES. I certainly could share some stories that I cannot fully understand, mystery, the unknown, LIFE it's self is the greatest mystery of all.

Now in my art I have no away of disassociating it from mystery, it's as shrouded in mystery as every waking day and what awaits me. From a particular work of art I would say that the most impacting on me since starting on this journey of creating would be a series of drip paintings I did.

My drip paintings were just something I wanted to try, pretty much like every medium I kind of blindly dive into to see if I could do it and what the results would be. Upon being more that delighted with the outcome of these spontaneous paintings which kind of develop before yours as the paint hits the canvas, almost with a mind of it's own, the curiosity exponentially awakened in the process of doing these paintings.

This curiosity caused me to closely observe the forms that became inarguably clear in the paintings, all of which I felt detached from and not the result of a conscious effort on my part to create. I did a series of 15 such paintings, some very large canvases. Each and every one of these paintings developed figures, creatures, animated and some even quite disturbing and even comical and even of sexual like acts amongst the creatures, violence was evident to me in the paintings.

Further each and every painting seemed to be telling a story, not any story, but it was a sort of battle of these creatures, beings, animated cartoons, anthropomorphic like creatures that were engaged in what was quite evident a battle, a most bloody battle. Now to me this alone was pretty unnerving and puzzling to say the least. It actually obsessed me for a time, disrupted my normal waking and sleeping hours as I struggled to understand.

Now if that was not enough, after further studying my own paintings what was most fascinating to me was that this pattern of creatures and the activities I described as a battle which further manifested itself from painting to painting.

The theme carried over throughout the entire series of paintings, all of them. During this time I became almost totally captivated and even somewhat incredulous as to what I was seeing and how could it be possible? Almost and to some degree questioning my own mental sanity because of what I was seeing. Could it be an over reactive mind? is this just some mechanism of my brain or self induced state? these were just some of the questions I asked myself and never came to resolve.

It became to intense and to difficult to reason and answer my own questions about the nature, origin and reason these paintings were manifesting these images because when painting in such a manner by splattering, dripping, and allowing paint to freely flow is so out of the motor controls that I though there is know way I was manipulating this outcome, none, it defied my understanding of randomness.

This left me baffled and quite exhausted in the end, a series of painting depicting a realm in what I would call a battle of good and evil is the most basic way in which I can describe it. I have since gifted this series to different people. I have only retained one of these paintings for myself, it was one of the first. I did video the making of at least one of these paintings and then I documented all the paintings photographically and also created videos of them. trying to grab every angle and figure and creature I could.

I would say that this is the most fascinating supernatural experience I have ever encountered in my life. I still don't understand it. It still fascinates me and I still know that the door to this realm is there, I'm just not sure I want to open it because I am pretty sure I won't ever be able to fully understand it, or maybe I really do? I have titled the series "Realms of the Unknown"

To be continued.............

I suspect that the human mind is programmed to be on the lookout for a boogeyman. It's interesting that many of our folk tales about strange creatures make them into large predators, just the sort of pre-emptive fear that we'd need to be on the lookout for as frail African hominids roaming the wilds before we developed tools and weapons. Prior to our taking over of the earth, no matter where we were, there were predators to watch out for.

Since most of them have been minimized now, we need something scary to take up that empty spot in our hominid brain. Monsters, demons, bigfoot, and all those other toothy, dangerous beings take the place of lions, tiger and bears (oh, my! says Dorothy) so we can mobilize our defenses. Without that, we seem to need to conjure up human enemies, not a helpful thing either.

Personally, I like my demons to have a supernatural dimension, so I can watch them in movies for entertainment. Vampires are far less threatening than real enemies, most of which are human today. When the vampire gets too scary, I can just turn off the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HrfbV16-FQ

But Doug how does that explain the things we do actually see that are beyond just the imagination?

Ronald,

Here's my story and I'm stickin to it! I've posted this before and of course, those here that don't believe in or haven't seen any, UFO's have had fun with this. My experience was in the Winter of 1968-69 and down in Florida. The newspaper article that I'll post was from 2 years earlier, same school, same area.

The College was out in the middle of nowhere, closest town was 7 miles and tiny. Mostly oranges groves and cattle. Not much to do. We had a small golf course attached to the school, across the street from the College itself, 2 lane road and the couples on weekends would grab blankets and go over there and if lucky, found some beer or wine to purchase and spend a few hours, before the women had to be returned to their dorm. It was a Catholic college and run by the Christian Brothers, very strict!

The couples would go across the street to the golf course, but always keep an eye for the brothers sneaking over with flashlights and trying to catch the "sinners".

One night, weekend night, when the women could stay out until; 11:00, I was over on the golf course with maybe 5-7 other couples, full moon and very bright. We all had our blankets and mostly under the huge pine trees, under the shadows of the trees, so bright. Not sure what time it was, few had watches, but probably 9-10:00 pm, I noticed what I thought was maybe a jeep or car coming over the top of the golf course, which was at the top of the hill. We all froze, ready to run.

It was TWO UFO's, with a "searchlight" on the ground, coming down the hill. It was so close that I could have hit it with a football, 30-40 yards. I could see the top of the "saucer", that had a series of windows, and inside, we could see a light spinning, from red to yellow to blue, inside the craft. Moving slowly, under 20 mph or less.

The UFO's made a slow circuit and then went back over the road and back to the college buildings again. They were less than 100 feet off the ground and were seen for almost 2 hours, by the priests/brothers, cops and teachers and of course, the entire school who were there.

We all could see UFO's from a distance at that school, part of the weekend, go find a field and wait to see who would see a UFO first!, But were ALWAYS distant in the sky, but definitely UFO's and would be reported in the local news sometimes.

At the same time period, these same style of UFO's had been seen up in NJ, at the Wanaque Reservoir, Winter of 1966.

https://www.wanaquelibrary.org/events/ufos-over-wanaque-55-years-later/



I've been interviewed by MUFON, for a "close encounter of the Third kind"......

Here's the original newspaper article, from the 1966 encounter, mine was 2 years later...



Rich

Someplace, buried on an old external drive, is my photo of a fresh bigfoot track in a patch of snow with a dollar bill lying beside it. It was high elevation. I was in a meadow below and heard a loud crack then a big crash above. Sounded like a good-sized tree falling. I was shooting tiger lilies blooming on a wet talus slope and paid it no mind. Trees fall in forests. Later, I decided to bushwhack up across a ridge, looking for views to the west. That's when I came upon one of the last patches of snow still protected in deep shade, and there was the bigfoot print, clear as day. There were other impressions in the ground but none nearly that clear because there was deep leaf litter and dead branches. I pulled a dollar from the baggie in my backpack for perspective, snapped a couple photos and got the heck out of there. Wondered later if that critter knocked the tree over as a warning to let me know I shouldn't be in its territory.

We've discovered just about every inch of the land surface of Earth. Even we even know to stay away from a certain remote island where the natives will shoot you full of arrows if you show up in a canoe full of bibles.

UFOs would require space travel beyond the view of the Hubble Telescope, some energy refuelings and some really, really, really long life spans (like millions of years).

UFO does not mean aliens. Most are government experiments with weather balloons, drones or aircraft that wondered out of their designated airspace.



Note: Psychedelic drugs were big in 1968-69 especially among college students.

Edward,

REALLY? Couldn't be anywhere closer? Where do the ones I saw and thousands of others saw back then in NJ or Florida. Or the ones now being reported by the Government, come from?

https://www.wanaquelibrary.org/events/ufos-over-wanaque-55-years-later/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2021/03/22/ufo-sightings-made-public-new-report-former-intel-chief-says/4802595001/

A government report, due June 1......

https://nowthisnews.com/news/ufo-sighting-reports-surged-during-the-pandemic-data-shows

Rich

Edward,

Yeah, nice "What about this" trick.....

Rich

mmm

Closer? Where? Hiding behind a moon on Jupiter?


"The farthest that Hubble has seen so far is about 10-15 billion light-years away."

Even if traveling billions of miles was possible, with all of our detection equipment for nuclear weapon launches, earthquakes and tidal waves, not much happens on our planet without being detected.

And why would they want to visit this planet any? Surely if they just needed minerals or something, there would be closer planets in their own galaxy. Most likely any civilization out there will be long dead and gone before we find it.

The fantasy of UFOs is just an extension of the desire to be meaningful. People want to believe somehow we are special rather than the result of random events.

Why do we assume some other planet would have evolved at an incredible rate that they can travel at will around the galaxy? More likely any lifeform never made it past two cell organisms or died out in their version of an ice age or meteor storm or sun death.

Don't be silly Edward! Explain the recent release of UFO sightings by the Navy/Government? Your dopey comment about "drugs",

"OH yeah, that was the night we put LSD in the water system and ALL of the priests,brothers, nuns, teachers, students and cops had all had some that night and it was JUST a "trip".....come on, just like last time when I posted this, you jump up with stuff that isn't any help.....or rather more of a hindrance......

Rich

Back to the original question - Yes, I include mystery in many of my pieces intended for the book cover market for murder mysteries, Sci-Fi and other such fiction.

....

The declassification information will be very disappointing to UFO fans. The true believers will never be satisfied and simply make up some new conspiracy theory.

These are very cool stories that keep me wondering! I am going to tell my second one now and it is a UFO one. Not near as interesting as Riche’s I’m afraid. This happened in about 1977 in a drive in movie theatre in Ventura. I was with three other people and we were watching a movie. What looked like an airplane slowly came drifting into view , not really noteworthy. But then it just seemed to stop and sit there for about five minutes doing nothing. Then it shot upwards and out of sight in a flash, sort of like a shooting star but going up and away. Funny thing was we all just sat there quietly for a while till one of us asked “um, did you see that?” No idea what it was.

Rich, I totally believe your account. I have also seen UFO's.

"People want to believe somehow we are special rather than the result of random events."

I guarantee you Edward I am no random event! You might be though, in your own mind, that is a distinct possibility so I do understand your position. :-)

This stuff is fun and rich material for the arts.

We had the EC Comics in the 40s and 50s - Strange Science, Tales from the Crypt. And all the Superhero stuff.

We the Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchock Presents and The Twilight Zone in the 50s and 60s.

Plus "My Favorite Martian"

For some reason, the 70s were a ripe time for these unexplained as chronicled on the TV show "In Search Of..."

Bigfoot
UFO
Alien Autopsy
Human Spontaneous Combustion
The Bermuda Triangle

Plus "Mort and Mindy"

In some ways, access to legitimate information put an end to a lot of these "unexplained" occurrences but then at the same time those with a deep mistrust of the government could find similar people online to mirror and amplify their own theories.

Remember when the mob was going to crash through the gates of Area 51 to free the captive aliens held by the government?

Maybe Geraldo will do a special event where he opens the secret chest of UFO information in June.

Kind of funny how the US seems to have a monopoly on all of this UFO information and visitor logs. What they don't like to visit Brazil, India or Thailand?

The question isn't "Did you see a UFO?" - as we as normal everyday people aren't constantly tracking all of the air traffic or meteorite activity. Or privy to classified military tests of rockets, drones, airplanes etc.

The question would be "Did you see a light and jump to the conclusion that little green men from outer space are coming to get you and perform weird surgeries on your private parts?"

Because at that point you might want to stop drinking. Or ask the priest to explain why these other worlds weren't covered in Sunday School.

Edward,

WHAT drives you to fight these facts? Mine is true, reported in the Newspaper, back then. As were the MANY incidents at the Wanaque Reservoir and of course, the hundreds more by Navy pilots etc. BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THEM, then CAN'T BE TRUE? WHY?

Mario,

Thanks for jumping in...I've seen these UFO's from a great distance, as I mentioned, we would go out on the weekends and have parties in the fields and wait for sightings! NO LIGHT POLLUTION out there!

BUT this story from the college is of course different and as I posted, "A Close Encounter of the Third Kind".....no more than 30-40 yards away from us on the golf course. 2 UFO's and were around for an hour or more.

Ronald, good story too! In the Wanaque link above, this reservoir was maybe 30 miles from my town in NJ and the Seniors, mostly with cars, would go up there and watch the flying saucers hovering over the lake and they had the same descriptions, light inside, colored lights, swirling around inside the dome of the UFO. I never got a ride up there and eventually, the cops would block the entrance, too many parties going on then.

The "Great Blackout of 1965" was supposedly caused by a squirrel chewing on a wire, BUT many reports of these same UFO's flying over the power lines.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

Rich

Fact: I met Santa Claus at the local JC Penny when I was a young boy.

Fact: Sat on his lap with my cousins.

Fact: I have a picture of the event.

Fact: Santa Claus is not real.

...

You'll notice the UFO stories appear around the time of the Cold War. Before the Wright Bros. and the Lumiers with their balloons, no stories of aliens from outer space.

The first published use of extraterrestrial as a noun occurred in 1956, during the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Consider that mankind didn't even know there were planets beyond the moon until high quality telescopes were invented. So no little green men from planets made of cheese, just stories of various gods amusing themselves by torturing humankind.

Doug,

UNTIL one UFO lands and offers rides, like at Disney or someplace, sightings are at the top of the list, for "proving" this stuff. Being 30-40 yards away from TWO UFO's is good enough for me and millions of others that believe they exist and visit us.

Take a day off and come over to our side for a visit, might be liberating....

Rich

A close-up sighting would definitely move me in the direction of belief, but so far, no luck on that. Unfortunately for me, some of my older family did work on "dark" projects that involved flying devices that looked like what someone might see as ET. Those were circular and triangular and one, basically a circular helicopter, could hover, but they were completely terrestrial, and as military projects, not successful enough to ever be made operational.

As far as I know, the only one of these that was successful emerged as the Space Shuttle, although it was purely passive, basically a carefully designed rock that would steer enough on the way down to make a soft landing, most of the time. It could NOT, however, go up or do anything more than make that very carefully planned nail-biting descent where everything had to be executed perfectly. Some its ancestors were attempts at being powered, but not good enough to be put into operation. Any of them would have been seen as UFOs from a distance, but they mainly resided in the hands of megabucks military contractors, only used way out in desert areas and made their way into one of those mysterious warehouses decades ago.

There was also some acknowledgment that "red herrings" were useful...have people out looking for ET and they will miss the badly designed helicopter or the flying triangle that finally did reach light of day as the F117.

Doug,

The "standard" "yeah, but what about" reply......Using modern-day jets as a comparison to what I saw, slow moving, SILENT UFOs is silly.....Not even Apples to oranges close....apples to turtles.....maybe.....

"A close-up sighting would definitely move me in the direction of belief," MOVE YOU??? Was I right about you needing to walk up to one and touch one before you started getting serious....??? LOL!

Rich

"Walk and touch one" would probably do it for me, as in move me all the way to believer. Unfortunately, however, I'm still waiting and kind of PO'ed that I've done all this waiting.

Back to the original question, after reading some awesomely thought provoking responses, do humans need these creatures like mothman, entities like demons or UFO's?

I think we do. Whatever form they take, they are usually here to put us in the direction we need to go even when they are scary.

Yep. We do. My bet is that we need to have these entities so we think something's going on in life that transcends our gritty, short existence.

I'd also bet that, deep in our primate brain wiring, we still have the idea of big scary animals that can eat us as well as fear and a desire to run. There's all sorts of ways to put this into a concrete form, be it angels, demons, monsters, predators, snakes or whatever. Extraterrestrials fit into this by giving us a larger venue for our fears but monsters in the basement, dark nights, scary weather and creepy alleyways work quite well too.

I agree so much with your thoughts Doug.

Lisa, Doug,

No I don't think HUMANS NEED UFOs, but the LOGIC there DEMANDS UFO. Just mathematically.....there are others.....leaving religion out of the equation of course....

Rich

I think that if these various creatures did not exist we would have to create them. Do I believe in life outside our planet? Yes. Could it be possible that we could be visited from creatures from outside our planet? Again I will say yes, but the hurdles to accomplish this are huge. Other creatures such as Bigfoot, I will say yes again but consider this to be a long shot. In any case I think there are a lot of mysteries out there and this is great for humans as we are a rather curious group.

Logic might demand UFOs in the sense that it seems extremely unlikely that we are along even in the galaxy, much less the universe...no question about that. It seems likely, however, that we are alone in our solar system so the rest of the visitation factor is distance. Assuming that some ET somewhere did figure out how to go superluminal and get here in some finite amount of time, they'd have to be so far beyond us that their interest would be like our interest in the stone-age population of some remote island.

In that respect, I don't get why they'd make such a journey, with so much knowledge, only to scare a bunch of us on a dark night, buzz over a small town on halloween, or become characters in movies. It just doesn't pass my criteria for "does that seem real?". I wouldn't claim to know what people DO see and I don't think they're crazy, but my preference for the simpler solution says that we need to rule out a lot of things before we actually get serious about ETs.

What about Roswell? Is there any doubt about that?

By the way, Doug, great comment about creatures of the night!

Did any of you see the Alien Autopsy?

That sure did Not look like a hoax to me. The 1950's movies were awful stupid looking, but that looked real...and why can't we find it on youtube anymore? The original one, not the 1995 remake.

The exorcist movie had such a bad vibe in the 70's. Could demons simply be ET's, the bad ones that keep us stupid?

The idea of something unseen taking over us like the body snatchers...now that's some great stuff. We need art!

And then in "Alien" and that thing exploding out of that actor's gut...no thank you to space aliens...minus Chewbacca in "Star Wars." I like him.

I think at least in the arts, we need monsters. If they are exaggerated, that is because humans like fear. Fear is a gift, essentially, the gift of survival. When people have fear, they think a little more about situational awareness and how to avoid horror like the really stupid people exploring space, occult, and wild areas without some protection.

The power of art is equal to the power of fear, and we need fear. Fear is why we created weaponry. That's all I can say about that because that can lead into discussions we cannot have, but we can certainly see how the moving images have almost dominated our thoughts on things.

There is really no reason to argue, it changes nothing about reality and reality is very savage. Even if you do art like I do to escape reality, we live in a violent harsh environment on earth. And it's not just a monster during the night either...far from it. Get out more and you will see scary people, animals killing other animals, it's somewhat awesomely entertaining...until it's not.

Last week was all about an inferno that got close to my home. I'm just saying, my family had to make a plan to escape our home fast with our pets in tow and our clothes on at bedtime. We were more scared at night, but it burned hotter in the day. I think it was "Towering Inferno" that taught me, fire can overtake you and there are many fires in my environment that lose control...every year or several months. We had six fire departments fighting this fire, and not much was said about it. Most people in my area don't even panic. LOL

Another interesting thing about the arts with respect to science fiction and pictures is that almost all science fiction becomes science fact in time. We humans know what is out there and what we're slowly learning from our history, breakthroughs in science as well as the arts as well in anomalies in video by average people. Our imaginations do travel into the future.

We are very earth-centered obviously, since it's the only life form we know about, but when you look at the human body and all of its problems and what a kludge it is, basically a fish that walks and breathes on land, it's pretty comical. Even if you do assume that carbon based, DNA based life is the ONLY one in the universe that actually works (pretty unlikely), it seems like other life forms may have evolved in a way that other sorts of carbon life made the space ships, like hyper-intelligent rose bushes or smart beetles. Somehow, however, our idea of ET is generally a vertebrate, often a humanoid, even if it does have antennae. It's Micheal Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still, a dapper Englishman with a jump suit and a robot, coming out of a flying saucer....space travel based on china place settings.

I've seen lots of Roswell stuff, alien autopsy video and somehow the BS-test always suggests that the simpler solution to what this is, is that it's a hoax or human error, deliberate or not. I admit that my criteria for truth and believability is set on the high side, but considering the amount of claims, counterclaims, fraud and lack of evidence, I think skepticism is a good place to be until Klaatu does land his flying saucer on the Mall in DC and politely ask to speak to the president.

By the way, a whole lot of those sketchy 1950's movies are are very in DVD box sets, at impossibly cheap prices, so you can binge watch humanoid aliens until you brain leaks out of your ears. And, then, there's always the classic TV series, My Favorite Martian.

It's interesting that the idea of an ET landing didn't happen until the late 1940's when there are a couple sitings, enhanced by subsequent movies like TDTESS in 1951. The movies set our standard for alien landings with spacecraft piloted by humanoids who were far ahead of us. We invented them to sell movie tickets.

By all means, I agree with you, Doug on just how comical it all is. My son and I watched all of those awesome movies and programs on TV.

We still need those monsters on the table in moving pictures to understand that when we travel into space for real, there is most likely events that will be fatal, like what happens in our movies. The first Mars mission will most likely be fatal, but I hope I'm wrong.

Doug,

Two things.

1. "It's interesting that the idea of an ET landing didn't happen until the late 1940's when there are a couple of sitings, enhanced by subsequent movies like TDTESS in 1951. The movies set our standard for alien landings with spacecraft piloted by humanoids who were far ahead of us. We invented them to sell movie tickets.", Well not true, as "visitors" have been described since man began to record history. See the book, "Chariots of the Gods", by Erich Von Daniken, which most of us nuts have read! Some stuff, borderline, but most thought-provoking.

2. And you're STILL thinking in NOW terms, for other beings in the surrounding planets and stars. BECAUSE WE haven't figured out how to travel any faster, THEN NO ONE HAS figured A WAY!!! Other beings MAY BE a MILLION YEARS ahead of us, a BILLION years!

It wasn't THAT long ago, the WE didn't know if a human body was sent into space, it would return or at the very least, die! We sent dogs and chimps first!

Just saying....

Rich

I work in this laboratory that is 75 years old and it's more than cool and not because of the awesome stuff we do there. The building is haunted.

I laugh to myself when people tell me they won't go into the tunnels down underground there due to the hauntings. I used to run down there in the winter time back in 1980's when I began my career in science. Nice and warm down there with beautiful lights. I could do two miles in a perfect atmosphere.

You see, I love all the fun stories, but I just don't totally buy into any of it...but one night on my job, there was an off normal occurance.

The tunnels are sooooo cool, dark and beautiful. I so wish I could share pictures, but that would be completely illegal. The lights are pink and green so beautiful. The floors to ceiling are spotless shiny painted cement and gorgeous today, but not back in the eighties when I started, it was kinda dingy and darkly lit, but still comfy for me.

I have had two or three super natural events that I love to the deeper core of my imagination and I'm sure three are just that, the fourth had to have been a hoax or true amazing occult experience and this is the one I will share. You'll like it.

Would you like to hear it. I'm sure I told it before.

I was working in a lab down several stories in the ground, a counting room that must not have any vibrations at all. Special tests require amazing technology to detect things much smaller than what I can comprehend, much smaller than nano. So enough of the boring science I have done because I have forgotten all that I did back then.

This story probably occurred in the early part of 1990's.

I came to work with a stack of gardening books and a few scary novels, and my guitar. I enjoyed playing my guitar in the deep narrow stairwells as my beautiful sounds echoed and the music pleased me even if no one could hear me. I don't like to perform for audiences.

My manager was not happy with me. To say the least, it appeared that I WAS NOT WORKING at all. Actually though, in what I did at the time, there were long waits between counts and I had to fight fatigue as I was working the night shift that night down several stories in a large purportedly haunted lab ...alone. I was not bothered by this in the least.

My manager at the time though was not displeased with all my gear to keep me awake, but more by one book I had in my stack of books. It's title: The Exorcist. LAMO!!!!

He chewed me out that bringing that book to work bothered him. No, he wasn't religious, he was a darn good scientist. But he said his mother got into that kind of stuff and he was bothered by it. I was like, "whatever, dude!"

Later that night he called the entire shift to his office. Since I was working alone down several stories, I didn't go up there as I was in the middle of a count and I wasn't really considered part of the shift. My work was entirely not to be disrupted. But he called me on the intercom stating for me to get up there immediately.

I went up there to find a serious group trying to identify banging that was occurring on the walls and ceiling of his office. Of course I thought it was hoax and even to this day I suspect that. I still work with this guy to this very day and he will not talk about the event. His wife has bought paintings from me and they seem like awesomely kind people.

Right after the banging quit on that long ago night, my boss told me, he would never be alone with me, he appeared to be completely creeped out by me laughing all the way through that night. I was the only one laughing though. I went back to my work and never thought again about it until the next night.

The very next night there was a terrible snow storm and the shift bus broke down and couldn't take the shift people home. My boss had to be with me alone because I was the only ride option he had. As I drove him home in my small car, he didn't speak at all and both of us were uncomfortable. I put the music on to ease his discomfort. To this day, he will not speak of that night, it makes him very uncomfortable and I feel bad for him.

Some people are confirmed ....believers in this stuff. I don't like to be made a fool of, but IF that was a real unnatural experience, my feeling is one of awe.

Love the story! Goes back to there is a lot we don’t know. I think the majority of these things have logical explanations but then there are others much harder to just explain away.

I don't want to explain them away. I'd just like to be able to at least have an idea about which part of these events is real and how much of it is some combination of illusion, delusion, and misinterpretation. One of my favorite references to this idea is the use of projective tests, most notably the old Rorschach Inkblot Test. It's fascinating that, at the bottom line, they ARE inkblots, carefully produced and standardized, but they mean nothing, just folded smudges. They are not literal representations of anything.

Many books and texts have been written on the amazing range of responses people have to the whole blot, parts of it or whatever and the diversity of those perceptions is truly amazing, but it's interesting because it shows the range of ways that people can see the same thing and make a different mistake about what it is...it IS an inkblot. Nevertheless, once a person decides that, for example, card number three is a man banging a hammer on an anvil or that the upper left is a barking dog, then they defend their view and think that others just don't get it.

Many of the things we see as ET or strange creatures have been seen many times before in different times and places but have been explained differently....demons from hell, visitations from God, monsters from the ID or whatever. Life really is like a Rorschach inkblot.

I like the "Monsters from the Id" explanation myself. It's all explained in the sci-fi movie, The Forbidden Planet...go to Youtube and type in Monsters from the Id and Leslie Nielsen will explain it. We make the monsters.

Doug, I love what you wrote:
"I don't want to explain them away. I'd just like to be able to at least have an idea about which part of these events is real and how much of it is some combination of illusion, delusion, and misinterpretation. One of my favorite references to this idea is the use of projective tests, most notably the old Rorschach Inkblot Test. It's fascinating that, at the bottom line, they ARE inkblots, carefully produced and standardized, but they mean nothing, just folded smudges. They are not literal representations of anything."

I think there are a lot of misinterpretations. For example, the pounding in my bosses office could have been a water hammer in the pipes. We can misinterpret so much!
One paranormal thing that everyone experiences is hallucinations when we dream. We see things, experience emotions from it and it can impact the following day.

Dreams
Deja Vu
Knowing Someone is Watching you from a few feet away
Knowing someone doesn't like you but is nice
Knowing someone is sick before they know
Foreboding feeling
Miracles

These are all experiences most people have in their lifetime. I could name at least 12 types of paranormal that everyone experiences. They seem normal because we are used to them. But they're not normal because we can't explain them at the time. It's easy to forget the TV that turns on by itself, the door that opens and closes by itself, and the phone that rings when it's not charged...don't answer that call. lol

Doug,

Are you implying, maybe, my "event" could somehow be misinterpreted? UFOs, 30-40 yards away? Might have been 2 weather balloons.....

As far as I can tell here, I'm the ONLY one with an experience of being this close to a UFO, 2 in my case, along with hundreds of students, faculty, and police. I hereby declare myself the "expert" of UFOs here on FAA....until somebody else can stand up......

Rich

I can't speak for your experience of anybody else's for that matter and most of the time don't doubt sincerity, but in all of my vicarious re-countings of events, the one thing they all have in common is a lack of evidence that's not based on ephemeral human senses. You'd think that by now, something unequivocal would remain behind, some piece of material evidence that remains unexplained after scrutiny by disinterested "analysts", as in people that are not trying to confirm or deny the nature of the event. Even it it's misinterpreted by humans and their frail intellect, we're seriously short on things to don't have more mundane explanations. What I always hear about these things is, "if it's not this then it MUST be ET", but maybe there's another explanation that might emerge if the analysis is not prejudiced by the "it must" be part of that statement.

We have a bias toward that due to movies, media, books, etc, but centuries ago, when people saw these things, back then it MUST have been saints, angels, demons or whatever haunted their minds. It's as much about us as it is about the sightings.

Doug,

You are a HARD NUT TO CRACK.....

Rich

Yeah Rich, I'm a hard-wired skeptic, who's seen too much stuff to take it on face value. Fortunately I do make an effort to keep an open mind since at least once in my life, I was wrong....maybe twice.

Doug,

Then make it 3 times....

Rich

Mushroom people perhaps? Seriously if the mushrooms on Mars are actual life forms then it outright proves life is out there and perhaps in the large scene of things common. It raises the possibility of intelligent life as well... well perhaps not on Earth,

Those were some big mushrooms Ronald, I think up close they might dwarf the empire state building. :-)

maybe they were wind swept boulders?

Not sure about the size but as far as I can tell that has not been the issue. The main issue is jumping the gun prior to the evidence or lack of evidence being properly evaluated.

Allright - Here we go again. For those who don't pay attention to this stuff, flying triangles are as common as UFOs that appear to be circular. As it usually goes, the question being, if we don't know what it IS, then it MUST be extraterrestrial. Maybe not, but UFOs, Foo Fighters, Flying Disks, Flying Saucers, Unknown Craft, Bogies, etc make better news copy. I don't think it will happen, but I would love to be still around when something about this is real in some material, documentable sense. I don't know whether I should say "when" or "if" but either is OK for me.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/unidentified-aerial-phenomena-defense-department/index.html