“Do You Want to Visit Another World?” My UFO Encounter
That warm, Colorado night, I was feeding our two scrappy mutts, Bowser and Dirkson, when instead of gobbling their food, they sat rigidly still on their haunches. Starring up at the starry night sky, their fur was eerily puffed in fear. We lived in a rural area in an old farmhouse my family had inherited from a childless aunt and uncle who ran a home for abandoned animals. This elderly hound and yappy chihuahua were the only dogs who had survived. Dinner time was their nirvana. But what above so riveted their attention?
Suddenly I felt the hair rising on the back of my neck and a throbbing in my head. When I look up, I thought, I’ll see something I’ve never seen before.
I sensed that the dogs and I were just alert animals encountering some presence, some power. Mesmerized, I dropped the tins of dog food. Neither Bowser nor Dirkson moved a muscle. They stayed frozen, snouts raised, eyes wide. Dirkson let out a little whine.
Very slowly, I lifted my head. At first, I was almost blinded by a spinning, circular orb of pulsing lights, hovering right above the roof. Before I had a millisecond to wonder, I heard a faint, ultrasonic hum, almost out of my hearing. Then echoing colors accompanying the strange music — violet piccolos, pink violins, a shimmering cello stroke of blazing baritone light. Other colors I’d never seen before, not could I describe, except to say they were gorgeous, otherworldly. Once as a child camping with my family in Glacier National Park, I’d witnessed the Aurora borealis. But this musical incandescence filled my eyes and ears. Every sense was awakened, astonished.
I felt no fear or pain, just a curious clarity. Was I suddenly psychotic? Or perhaps hallucinating from lack of oxygen? After all, this farmhouse was over 6,000 feet high. But having been born in the High Sierra mountains, I’d never had any trouble with altitude. Maybe I was having a stroke? But I was only 27 years old. Well, if this was my end, I’d welcome such beauty.
Illumined by the rhythmic colors, I instinctively raised both palms to the sky. My skin tingled and pulsed in tune as the buoyant lights vibrated down my backbone into my feet. Maybe I would levitate? But to my surprise my sandals stayed rooted to the ground.
Then the invitation, so courteous it seemed like diplomacy. Would you like to visit another world?
Oh, it finally occurred to me. I wasn’t hallucinating or dying. I was being offered a glimpse of another universe, perhaps one quite close to mine. The singing light show above might be the transport to a parallel world like those I’d read about in string theory physics.
Touring another world seemed very tempting, especially given the mystery of this fuller spectrum of musical colors. I had always experienced some synesthesia — hearing colors and seeing sounds, especially as a child. This extraterrestrial encounter might complete my education. I considered my options: I was not currently in love with anyone; I had already left my family and was independent; I was always seeking the mystical here on earth. Perhaps this visit might enhance and help explain this and other worlds.
I smiled, basking in the ricochet of music and lights. Certainly, such minds who had created this beautiful blend were worth meeting. But then I remembered, I had almost finished my first novel. I didn’t even know the ending of it. So how could I leave now?
Trying to call upon my human version of telepathy I answered the invitation: I know this seems silly to you, but I to finish something here first before I visit you.
A hearty blast of purple strings and what sounded like throaty South American pan pikes showered me. Somehow, I intuited these were the sounds and colors of laughter from another world. Perhaps laughter translates through all languages, all galaxies.
Yes, their telepathy assured me. Yes, of course. Anytime. We’re around.
In one blink, the musical lights flashed boldly and then collapsed into a tiny blue-orange globe that zipped straight up into the sky in a nanosecond. Freed from that other gravity, Bowser and Dirkson leapt up and barked, running in circles around me like mad dogs. Every now and then they would pause, sniff the air, and stare up, in case this astonishing spacecraft might return. Good guard dogs. Useless with aliens.
Dazed, I sat down on the ground. For the first time I felt some skepticism. Maybe I should start taking drugs since my normal life had turned psychedelic. Should I confide in anybody about this? Was I going to become an unreliable narrator in my own life?
After a few moments, I decided to simply call the local county airport to report a sighting. I wouldn’t use my name. A man replied in a flat, dispatcher’s voice that they’d had over 100 calls in the past hour, all reporting strange lights and what looked like an unidentified flying object.
“We get a lot of these reports out here in the country,” he said. “We don’t take these things too seriously . . . summer heat lightning, you know.”
“So you don’t think aliens are using the Rockies as some sort of a launching pad?” I teased him, making sure my tone suggested that I wasn’t serious.
There was dead silence. Then a click and the drone of a dead line.
The next day, I heard people talking about the weird lights at the local grocery store. “This area is a real hot spot for sightings,” the cashier casually told me as she rang up my food. “UFO buffs are always hanging around here. We’ve even had some government investigators. Very hush-hush.”
What was it about these vast prairie flats tucked right under dramatic red rock mountains that might attract unearthly visitors? I asked my Native neighbor, Mr. Vale, for his advice. He was almost ninety and had lived here much of his life.
“This is sacred land,” he said simply. “Any kind of tribe knows it. Even those from other worlds.”
After that sighting, I’ve been fascinated by UFO reporting, especially since the recent news stories, viral U.S. Navy videos, but inconclusive Pentagon intelligence reports on what are now being called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). The Pentagon “stops short of ruling out aliens,” reports the New York Times. TV interviews with credible pilots show grainy images of the humanly impossible trajectories of unidentified flying aircraft. On CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” retired Navy pilot, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, says that pilots training off the Atlantic “see things like this all the time.”
Several years ago, I had my second encounter. I had landed in the hospital ER with severe dehydration after a terrible stomach flu. As I lay ill, hooked up to several bags of life-saving fluids, I again felt that eerie echo of otherworldly music and color, just out of my sight. It took me a few moments to remember when I’d encountered these auditory and physical sensations before — decades before when I’d looked up at the night sky and seen the flashing globe of a UFO spacecraft. The invitation. My reluctance because I was so young and not in a hurry to leave this world.
Now I was older and had lived long enough to see and be haunted by more shadows in my own species, to witness this world as both utterly beautiful — and heartbreaking. Was it time, I wondered, to accept their generous invitations? Then the biggest question: Am I needed in another world?
Maybe I had given all that was required of me here. Maybe being with humans — always a primitive and dismaying species — was no longer where I belonged. I’ve never really fit in. But writers and creative artists rarely do. This idea of being truly alien had never really struck me as it did that night in the ER. As I lay listening to the bleep of the machines, the cries and chaos outside my ER room, it occurred to me then that these extraterrestrials who had mastered space travel might also be more advanced healers.
Now, I was really inclined to accept their invitation since I so obviously needed healing. I tuned into my deepest intuitive skills from years of meditating and asked, “Will you help me heal?”
Again, that generous laughter and the answer. Of course, why do you think we’re here with you?
I breathed deeply, opening all my senses and my heart to their healing help. Within an hour the doctors said, “Your EKG is normal again, your potassium has risen from the very dangerous 2.6 to 3.1, so we don’t have to check you into the hospital overnight. You’re free to go home.”
All the way home, I tried to hold on to the subtle musical colors from my extraterrestrial healers. But they were fading. I did manage, as I was falling asleep in my own bed, to ask, Will you come back another time when I’m not sick, but can really get to know you better?
I was showered with that music and otherworldly colors that I still cannot describe. Yes, we are always near. All the time. Just ask.
And I do.~
Bio: Brenda Peterson is a novelist and nature writer, author of over 20 books, including the New York Times “Notable Book of the Year” novel, Duck and Cover, just out in audiobook. Her memoir I Want to Be Left Behind was selected as a “Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year” by The Christian Science Monitor and chosen by independent booksellers as a “Great Read” and “Indie Next.” Her recent books include Wolf Nation, Wild Orca ,Your Life is a Book: How to Craft and Publish Your Memoir; and the new picture book with artist, Ed Young, Catastrophe by the Sea set on the Salish Sea. www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com
