l[artwork copyright 2015 by Josh Chambers
By Kyle K. Mann
Whatever was shining brightly over the night-shrouded freeway up ahead, it was extremely unusual, and bizarre.
I raced out of L.A. at midnight on the northbound Interstate 5 with my buddy, Ab the Editor, riding shotgun. We were bound for San Francisco, and looked to arrive a bit before dawn, cruising in my very fast ex-police car.
The I-5 was different in the early 1980’s than it is now, with its brightly lit and unbearably smelly cow pens. The I-5 had only been open a few years, and had long stretches of nothing but endless dark and dusty fields.
What a Godforsaken place to drive for five or six hours. I stomped on the gas pedal impatiently, tooling the absurdly over-powered, lead-gasoline-burning cop-mobile northward, over the barren Tehachapi Mountains and down into the huge Central Valley.
We might have had a couple hits of pot, but it wasn’t super strong or anything. Certainly not powerful enough to explain the grotesquely twisting lights we both were seeing over the freeway several miles ahead. The lights were piercingly bright, and featured unusually intense colors.
“What is that up there, man?” Ab asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. I glanced over at him as he rubbed his lightly bearded chin in thought.
“I dunno, a crop dusting plane?”
Ab grunted in disbelief. “Can’t be, it just hovers there.”
“Well… crop dusting helicopter?”
“Do those exist?”
“Think so, I dunno.”
“Then what the hell is that?”
* * * * *
UFO researchers have noted that there are predictable steps that govern many UFO sightings. Often at the start of the sighting, percipients try to explain away the object(s) within a framework of rational belief, at least at first. Ab and I were already at the end of that first stage.
UFO’s were a subject that had fascinated me for years. My childhood friend Jim Checkley had owned the first serious books I had seen on the topic, starting with Morris Jessup’s 1950’s work “The Case for the UFO.” I was ten years old when I read the book in 1961. I was astounded. Was science fiction actually real?
As my childhood progressed, I subsequently read everything I could about UFO’s. Major Donald Keyhoe, a Marine naval pilot, was the first serious and notable writer in the field, with his first magazine article appearing in late 1949 and his “Flying Saucer” books in the early 1950’s. Carl Jung, who wrote his own work on the subject, supported the validity of Keyhoe’s first two books.
Another important source was Capt. Edward Ruppelt, who had led the U.S. Air Force investigation into UFO’s, Project Blue Book, in the early 1950’s. Ruppelt is credited with creating the term UFO, and his insider book, “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” gives a fascinating look at subject. There are also reporter and radio broadcaster Frank Edwards’ books, which gather numerous verifiable press reports, which were mind-blowing reads in the 1960’s.
As the years went by I followed the 60’s and 70’s works of J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee and David Saunders, as well as the startling public pronouncements of noted atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald, Gen. Douglas McArthur and the first CIA Director, Roscoe Hillenkoeter. Hillenkoeter stated emphatically in the 1950’s that UFO’s were entering our atmosphere and that something should be done.
Seriously, think about that. The first CIA director, after he left the organization, was pushing UFO Disclosure! Interestingly, very few people know this fact today. Personally, I find the information compelling, and vital.
Need more? OK, how about the formations of UFO’s that flew over Washington D.C. in the summer of 1952? You better believe it happened, as it was described in major newspapers and even Life and Time Magazines. But in the next year, 1953, the secret CIA-led Robertson Panel pulled the plug on virtually all UFO reporting, unless it was designed to make fun of “little green men.”
However, the “swamp gas” fiasco re-opened the media gates in the mid 1960’s. As the years went by, the more I looked into the reality of UFO’s, the more I was drawn in.
By the mid-70’s I was studying the subject intently, and even made a trip to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., where I acquired a printout of the names, authors and publishers of every book on the subject, enabling further study.
As I pondered these matters, I often wondered if I would ever be fortunate enough to actually see a UFO. But now in 1982, in the dead of night on the deserted I-5, I was face-to-face with The Unknown, and I wasn’t too sure “fortunate” was the right word. The truth is, I felt the grip of fear.
* * * * *
I eased up on the gas, and slowed the police cruiser, originally an undercover vehicle sold as surplus, down from 90 to 80, then 70. “The lights seem to merge,” I said to Ab with nervous awe. “The greens and reds change into yellow, and blue.”
“Yeah, I see that,” Ab confirmed. We continued to describe what we were seeing to each other, in complete agreement on the details. “What’s that weird mist?” He too sounded scared. “The mist coming out of them?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” I let my right foot up a bit more. We slowed to 60, then 50. “I don’t wanna drive under that,” I stated firmly, with considerable apprehension.
“But look, it’s moving to the side, over that way.”
We watched the lights ease towards the ground on our right, perhaps 100 yards back from the roadway. We again agreed, as we drew still closer, that neither of us had ever viewed anything similar, and that this was an actual UFO… landing!
Ok, I confess: I was agitated, and was not liking the distinct sensation I had that those lights were aware of me, and I was being sized up, studied. A bright beam of dazzling white light suddenly burst out from the colored lights and swept across the field towards us. What I badly wanted to do was stomp on the pedal and get out of there…
And then everything went black.
* * * * *
These days, pushing age 64, I’m following the subject of UFO’s warily. That something inexplicable is going on, I have no doubt. I’ve seen it, but don’t pretend to know what it is. Back in the 1960’s, I had read about Barney and Betty Hill’s infamous alleged UFO abduction, of course. My I-5 incident has certain structural similarities. I find that depressing, to be honest.
By the 1980’s, there were books out there that credibly noted that a “high degree of strangeness” was in play in some UFO reports, with strong indications that the U.S. Government was withholding vital information. And not just the U.S. Government. The U.K. had its “Rendelsham Forest incident” in England in 1980, as just one example. That’s a creepy one.
The book “Clear Intent” by Fawcett and Greenwood published in 1984, demonstrates, with actual documents obtained by lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act, that UFO’s have interacted with nuclear missiles, shutting the missiles down and effectively rendering them inoperable! This text shocked me when I bought it in the mid 1980’s and is still a blithering read today: documented evidence that was pried out of the unwilling U.S. government via the Freedom of Information Act. UFO’s, it would seem, are interested in nuclear weapons.
There are other credible places to find information. Richard M. Dolan is another good source, with his 2002 work “UFO’s and the National Security State” tying together numerous pieces of the UFO puzzle with intelligence agencies like the CIA and the NSA. Which brings us to the New World Order.
What I have seen in my lifetime, from the late 50’s to 2015, is a distinct case of “boiling frog” syndrome, with the heat gradually being raised so slowly that the frog does not jump out. In a similar way, our once relatively free society has slowly gone beyond Orwellian in my lifetime.
I have to compare the gradual loss of freedoms at home and worldwide as the same scenario as the boiling frog. It’s possible, in my view, that UFO’s are being used or will be used as a mechanism, either directly or indirectly, to prepare us for World Government, and that so far we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Alien Disclosure, either real or manufactured, could be the last turn of the knob of the gas burner heating up the frog pot.
How? Simply put, if the governments of the world simply announced that they had proof of an alien presence, possibly a threatening one, people would be frantic enough to agree to almost anything “to keep us safe.” This could include a World Government, and a worldwide tyranny beyond anything ever previously experienced on our little world. Frog boiled.
If the topic interests you, check out Dolan’s 2012 book, “A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact.” I don’t agree with everything in there, but it makes you think about what could be just down the road.
And that, determined and patient readers, brings us back to my own case of “missing time.”
* * * * *
I realized that I was seated, and we were moving down the freeway. Something had happened. But what?
I slowly became aware of several things. First, I was no longer behind the wheel; Ab was now driving. And as strange as that began to seem, I then noticed that I was speaking what sounded like a language I did not understand, as was Ab. Seriously freaky!
This moaning gabble effect is termed glossolalia, which some religious groups refer to as “speaking in tongues.” I remember listening to the sounds Ab and I were making with extreme astonishment and dismay.
The utterances were scary, as if someone else was trying to speak with my voice but they weren’t used to my vocal chords. I didn’t like it, needless to say. I don’t like thinking about it now, either.
Slowly the speaking effect wore off, and we fell silent. Ab drove the car northward at the speed limit. We both sat mute, like statues of stone, recovering. What the hell had happened? We finally both ventured a few questions to each other and drove into the grey San Francisco dawn to my place where we collapsed. We didn’t talk much later when we woke up. It was all extremely weird and somehow embarrassing.
In the weeks and months that followed the incident, I gradually resolved to leave the toxic relationship I was in and move to Santa Monica, to take a college class in radio broadcasting that Ab recommended. After the UFO encounter and the missing time, my whole life changed, including my employment (radio broadcasting indeed, then the film biz) and my attitude about life in general and UFO’s in particular. My study of the topic eased up considerably, and as I say, I now follow developments with wary humor.
* * * * *
Over three decades have passed. Ab and I don’t speak a lot lately, either because I would ask him “What was that thing we saw” or for other reasons, I can’t say.
For a long time, I refused to talk about the experience with anyone else, and when I finally did it was just a few close friends who I had discussed UFO’s with for years. One of those friends arranged for me to be interviewed for a UFO book, anonymously. Otherwise, I have kept quiet about the I-5 UFO.
Until now. But I should add, this UFO essay you are reading has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written. I have felt strangely at odds with something in my psyche, feeling distinctly blocked for stretches of time. Couldn’t tell you what that reluctance is, or why it’s there.
No, I refuse to be hypnotized to unlock any memories that may be buried. I am, to be bluntly honest, afraid of what I might say. Either I’m crazy, or I got messed with. Either way, it is unpleasant, to say the least.
So, assuming I’m not just nuts along with Ab, what do I think happened during my missing time? I have no clue whatsoever. The last thing I recall is terror when hit by the beam. Examined? Reprogrammed? Or just some kind of shared hallucination? If real, what was it? Alien? Time-travelers? Other-dimensional? Military experiment? How did Ab and I switch places in the car? I just don’t know.
I do read the Internet carefully of late for UFO news and developments in space, both hard science and the further edges of unprovable strangeness. I have no way of knowing how many of the pictures of “anomalous objects” I have seen are fakes. But some of the pictures of UFO’s were taken by astronauts and, supposedly, some astronauts believe in aliens. It’s hard to sort out, I admit.
I’m very interested in current news about the Dawn spacecraft that recently began orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres, between Mars and Jupiter in the Asteroid Belt, where bright sunlight is reflecting off unknown objects on the surface. Ice? Quite possibly.
But these “bright spots” just might, again might, be something much stranger, such as alien artifacts. I’m not saying it’s likely that we will see photos of alien artifacts or whatever, just that it is possible, and an undeniable discovery would make UFO Disclosure inevitable. Everything would change overnight.
As of this writing, April 16, 2015, the bright spots are under vigorous scientific debate. We will get a better look at the surface, and presumably higher resolution views of Ceres in a few weeks, in late April, as the Dawn spacecraft moves to the sunlit side of Ceres.
* * * * *
Conclusion: I used to wait for a day when UFO Disclosure occurred. Now I don’t. As I say, I think Disclosure could be used as an excuse to do some truly evil things to people, in the name of security. How about space-based weapons, as ex-Nazi U.S. rocket scientist Werner Von Braun was supposedly concerned were going to be built? Fry the aliens!
Such weapons could be just as easily used to fry people on Earth. Call me paranoid, but if it comes to that, I think we would be looking back to this relatively innocent era with longing.
As usual, I hope I’m wrong. But I’m not alone in feeling paranoid; some deep observers and thinkers are on record on the topic. It was researcher Charles Fort who nearly 100 years ago wrote “I think we’re property.”
It’s bad enough if we are being tricked by the pushers of the New World Order. After all, they are probably human, evil though they are.
But Stephen Hawking has been saying for years now that we shouldn’t be trying to contact aliens, as we have no idea what their intentions might be.
Hawking isn’t exactly dumb. Hostile or uncaring superior aliens visiting our planet, or worse, such aliens already well-established here, is a pretty ugly scenario.
God help us if Charles Fort was actually right.
The Earth could be just a huge stinky cow pen, like those built alongside the I-5.
By Kyle K. Mann
Topanga
April 16, 2015
