Only A Step Away
An old man with unkempt hair quietly crossed the street. He wore moon boots and a leather jacket with an American flag on the back. Once across the street, he looked up. He seemed tired, but not once did he look away. Slowly his hand rose to his mouth to cover the surprise on his face. Others walked by without giving the man a second thought. But I saw him. Not in some poetic I notice the faceless people on the street type of way. He captured my interest because he was seeing something that others weren’t. And that, to me, was noteworthy. Was he lost in thought? What did he witness that stopped him dead in his tracks on a busy street corner in Boston, Massachusetts?
The year was 2008, and I was on a weekend getaway. I was also on the verge of moving to Bangor, Maine, after years of living in my favorite part of the state, Portland. I had lived in Boston for a bit after high school, and there were so many distractions that the paranormal didn’t really have a place there—except for one night back in December of 1996.
That cold night in 1996, my roommate and I were out on the town to celebrate my birthday. Well, as much as two nineteen-year-olds could with only twenty dollars between them. Even though the night was young, we were broke and cold, so we made our way home. I was in an unfamiliar area of the city that my roommate knew better, so I followed him to the closest Green Line T-stop. As we walked, the atmosphere seemed to change. It was subtle, so I kept it to myself and continued walking. After a few minutes, my roommate said, “It’s right up here” and gestured to the T-stop ahead. I looked where he was pointing, and noticed that we had just started walking through a new block that housed a massive office building. Most of the lights were off except for the top couple of floors. Cleaners, I thought, still unable to shake the ominous feeling I had.
We settled in on the T-stop bench and waited for our ride. My roommate noticed it first. “Look,” he said, and pointed up toward the building. I looked at him and followed his index finger to a window near the top of the building. It was obvious what had caught his attention once I spotted it for myself. Someone stood in the window and stared down at us.
“Whoa,” I whispered, unable to take my eyes off the figure. My roommate, after a long stare upward, said, “It’s probably just some creep trying to freak us out.” “I don’t know, man,” I said hesitantly. “It hasn’t moved and it feels like it’s staring into my friggin’ soul.” This resulted in an eruption of laughter, which was exactly what we both needed. “That was so lame!” my friend squeaked out in between laughs. The distraction broke my stare at the window, and when I looked back, whatever it was had disappeared.
What I found interesting, looking back on this incident years later, was that we had been in a large city but it felt like no one noticed us, nor we them. We had this experience in a very busy section of Boston, and the passersby seemed to melt away. There was only me, my roommate, and that building. I wonder if that’s how that old man I saw in 2008 felt. No one noticed him stopped on that sidewalk staring at who-knows-what. Did he notice them? Or was he wrapped up in his own experience, just as I had been?
On that busy street corner, the old man continued to gaze. My gaze finally followed his, but I saw nothing. I kept looking for a moment until I was sure that I wasn’t missing anything. When I looked back at the man, his gaze was now on the sidewalk and he was smiling. I couldn’t help but smile, too. What had he seen? A UFO? I quickly thought, and did not dismiss it. Perhaps his smile was one of peace. Maybe he knew something that the rest of us didn’t, so he smiled.
Silver Ball in the Bangor Sky
In the winter of 2007, I lived in Freeport, Maine, and worked for a wholesale auto parts company out of Portland. My job was to deliver various auto parts to mechanics from Portland to Bangor. During one of my trips up north, I was parked at a storage facility unloading a few items from my truck when a shiny object caught my eye. I turned my head and saw something in the sky that appeared to be hovering over Penobscot Bay. It was silver and round like a Christmas ornament. I stared at it for a few minutes, and then it vanished. There was no high-speed acceleration; it didn’t even “blink out.” It simply vanished; it was there, and then it was gone. I almost didn’t notice at first. I stared at an empty sky until I realized it wasn’t there anymore.
I kept looking at the sky, and I found myself smiling. Smiling like that old man. I think that incident is what keeps me gazing at the sky. Sure, I look up more often than most. I’m always trying to catch a glimpse of something, anything (a thunderbird would be awesome!). But that incident taught me that when you least expect it, something may be there. So, I look. When I drive, day or night, I look. When I have a cigarette break at work, or clean the snow off my car (it’s winter in Maine as I write this, yikes!), I look. I’ve seen some interesting things just by paying attention, just by looking. Do I think everything I have seen is an extraterrestrial craft? Of course not. Some are shooting stars, some are meteors, some are satellites. But some, well, I don’t know.
Two Ghosts and Two UFOs!
On a Friday afternoon in July of 2011, I traveled south from Bangor, headed to the state capital, Augusta. I was going to Franklin Street to conduct a paranormal investigation of a former bakery and the adjacent warehouse. I had been there numerous times previously with my paranormal investigation team, Paranormal Research in Maine (P.R.I.ME Paranormal), but on that night, it would be just me and the location’s owner. Earlier in the week he’d reached out to me to discuss some of the recent paranormal encounters that he was experiencing. We’d discussed the possibility of my team coming back, but our schedules did not allow for this, so I offered to come down by myself for a bare-bones investigation. An investigation of this sort simply meant using minimal equipment and people. On that night, I brought a handheld night vision camcorder, a digital camera, a couple of K-IIs (EMF detectors), and some digital audio recorders.
Once on-site, the owner and I quickly exchanged pleasantries and got right down to the investigation. The location was a two-story brick building built in the early to mid twentieth century. The first floor served as the business area while the second floor was home to the original owner’s family. The first floor now consisted of offices, a game room (billiards), a storage room complete with an embalming table (previously used by the bakery to wash pans and baking utensils, dang!), and a large room where several classic collectible automobiles were currently on display (car room).
A figure captured with night vision camera in a carport.
The floors appeared to be made of burnt pine, beautifully polished. The second floor (the living quarters) consist of multiple bedrooms, a living room area, a sunroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a laundry room. There were two sets of large stairs on either side of the warehouse, both leading to the basement. Additionally, there was a large patio area outside the laundry room where, during the time the bakery was in operation, parties were held. Finally, there was a full, unfinished basement consisting of a large open area and three smaller unfinished rooms. (At the time of this writing, the owner has finished the basement into a beautiful lounge area.)
While setting up in the area we wanted to investigate first, we discussed how we would conduct ourselves as “casually living and hanging about the property” much like the owner did daily, which had resulted in numerous paranormal encounters. An investigation done in this manner, in my opinion, would allow me a glimpse into the day-to-day activity that was experienced. Many times, the owner was at work in his office or in the “car room” on his laptop and would spy a shadow out of the corner of his eye, or sometimes, a picture hanging on the far corner of the room would suddenly fall off the wall.
We started the investigation in the “car room” by conducting a casual EVP session. Lights were kept on and we were conversational. Almost immediately, we started getting wraps and knocks in response to our questions. I had the K-II meter turned on, but no fluctuations in electric magnetic fields were detected during this active period. After a while, the responsive noises stopped, and we decided to move to the “billiards room.” Numerous experiences had occurred there as well, witnessed by many friends and visitors to the home. Notably, while playing pool, witnesses had observed shadow movement from the hallway running perpendicular to the room. Laughter and coughs had been heard, and a marble moving on its own was captured on camera.
We settled in on a couch and chair on what looked like a staging area in the back of the room. There, we resumed our conversational EVP session. Some noises were heard in the room, some even responsive, but the momentum from the “car room” did not follow us. Our discussion moved away from the bakery and activity and we started having more personal conversations. We talked about work and UFOs, family and Bigfoot. After a little while, the owner noticed some shadow activity from the hallway at the far end of the room. I missed those movements and decided to focus my attention there. For a time, I observed nothing. Then, while we talked (he was relating a story from his childhood), I briefly looked toward the hallway. I saw something, but it wasn’t a shadow.
I stood up and asked, “Did you see that?” “See what?” the owner replied. I told him that when I’d looked down at the hallway, I saw the last bit of a leg moving past the doorway. He assumed I saw a shadow, but I didn’t. I saw a flesh and blood calf muscle and some white material toward the top of it; perhaps white shorts or a skirt. Upon hearing this, the owner explained that during the time the bakery was operational, male workers wore white shirts and pants, and the female workers wore knee-length white dresses. It was possible that I may have witnessed one of the female workers, and this excited us.
I walked the length of the room to the hallway, but saw nothing. The hallway felt cold, but the night was very humid and I’m sure my walk to the hallway had cooled my sweat to the point where I could confuse it with a cold spot. I observed no other activity in the hallway, so I resumed my perch on the couch.
After thirty minutes or so, we decided to move back to the “car room.” We continued talking, though no further activity was observed, or so we thought. Suddenly, in the middle of our conversation, I noticed something behind the owner. My eyes shifted away from his and settled on the back portion of one of the vehicles on display. Standing there, seemingly leaning against the vehicle, I saw a shadow person. I could see the outline of a head and shoulders, and of a partial arm. It appeared the entity saw me notice it, since it darted off quickly to the left. As it did so, I saw its body turn to the left and I observed the elbow portion of its arm, as if it had turned and run away. The whole experience lasted only a few seconds, but it was quite exciting.
After another hour or so, the activity came to a complete stop. We parted ways, and I was satisfied with our organic approach to the investigation. We’d had great conversations and a few thrilling encounters. But as I was packing up my car and getting ready for my drive back to Bangor, a different type of encounter unexpectedly occurred.
With the car packed, I closed my trunk. As I did so, I looked up into the sky and saw a sparkling gold “thing” float slowly by. If I had to estimate its altitude, I would guess one hundred feet, when compared to the tall apartment buildings it passed by. It was silent and in constant motion, not keeping any identifiable shape. The only thing I could compare it to would be a child’s sparkler attached to an arrow, shot with a bow into the air.
The event lasted no longer than twenty seconds, since the sparkling thing disappeared behind a building. I looked back at the building I had just investigated and contemplated if I should go and tell the owner what I had seen. But I didn’t. It was late, he already had the lights off, and I had a little over an hour to drive.
I swiftly navigated the side streets of Augusta and found Interstate 95 in about ten minutes. I put on a CD by the group Grand Buffet and cracked the driver’s side window to have a smoke. As I made my way past the Waterville exits, the CD ended, so I turned on the radio and set my dial to Coast to Coast AM. George Noory was interviewing Dr. Paul Connett about the toxicity of fluoride when a red light, just above the tree tops, came into my field of vision. It traveled in a high arc from one side of the highway to the other, right to left. I know this may sound crazy, but it looked exactly like the other oddity I had spotted earlier that night. Again, it looked as though someone was behind the tree line on the right side of the highway and had shot a sparkler tied to an arrow toward the left side of the highway. This object traveled faster than the first one, which allowed for a brief observation, say ten seconds.
I quickly shut George Noory off and drove with my jaw dropped for a moment. I thought, Well, what the hell was that?! and wished I could rewind what I had just seen. I was wide awake for the rest of the drive and kept the radio off so I could concentrate. Both incidents were odd, no denying that, but what were they? It was July still; could people have been setting off fireworks? The first sighting had no sound. The second, well, I was driving with a window cracked and the radio on, so I have no idea if it made a sound. What I do know is that if it was fireworks, it did not burst into any sort of colored plume of sparks. It just went from one side of the highway to the other. Weird.
Perception
I have been on a lot of paranormal investigations and have seen some odd things in the sky. The one constant throughout every location, client, and experience is perception. Clients can embellish, locations can seem ominous, and experiences are nothing more than someone’s perception, just like my “fireworks UFOs.” But let’s stop for a moment and think about that word, perception. According to Dictionary.com, in psychology it’s defined as “a single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while a stimulus is present.” The idea of perception can help us arrive at a better understanding of what the paranormal could really mean—not for our society today, but as a scientifically defined and universally accepted concept in a not-so-distant future.
Perception is different for all of us. It includes everything surrounding us; the makeup of our thoughts, actions, and personality; and how we conduct our lives and what we do with them. Perception is how we see the world, our loved ones, and friends. It’s how we react to bumps in the night or lights in the sky. Case in point: In 1999, I gave my roommate a ride to work very early one morning. As this was their first day on the job, with no car, they had asked for a ride and I obliged. It was four o’clock in the morning while I drove. I started to sense a large object in the sky, and it seemingly loomed over my vehicle. The interior of the car started to glow and I slowly turned my head, ready for a close encounter.
Time slowed down, and my tired eyes found the source of the light. I looked on in disbelief … There, above us, hovered a UFO not forty feet away. Its lights illuminated the surrounding area. I panicked and turned to my roommate and said, “That’s not good.” I looked down the road, saw more lights headed toward us, and I’ll tell you what, they looked like a fleet of starships, poised and ready for war.
Finally, my roommate responded calmly yet sarcastically, “Those are street lights, you idiot!” I snapped out of my sleep-deprived trance and looked at the large object again. Ah yes … perception … Streetlight, I thought, I see you now. Aware of my tenuous misjudgment and with resounding candor, I thanked the streetlight for the experience.
While not a paranormal event, the experience was most certainly noteworthy. It helped me to understand that perception is reality. Of course, I have always known this to be true, but as with most common things, it is not always at the forefront of your mind. It’s terribly easy to fall prey to misperception and misidentification. When subtly at work in a situation, its impact can be profound. I say this because that has been my experience—rather, my perception. I was in a moment where I truly thought a UFO, an actual extraterrestrial vehicle, had closed in on my car, and I was frightened. When confronted with the reality of the situation, I felt a rush of relief. But that does not take away from the fact that for a moment, aliens existed, and I knew it to be true. It was my reality.
I take this knowledge with me on every investigation, with every client I interview, and two things occur because of it. One, I am very open-minded to their perception of events that they have witnessed. Two, I also understand that it is their perception. This awareness helps us to investigate sans bias; we can let the location speak for itself and our equipment capture that conversation. Sometimes, we have our own personal experiences while at these locations, but that simply fuels the conversation between location and equipment. We will rush to an area with night vision cameras and EMF detectors, hoping to catch a glimpse of what could have caused the perceived personal experience. Often, the conversation is not captured—it remains a secret told to the perceiver, precious but ultimately frustrating.
In an article titled “Visual Perception Theory,” Saul McLeod, a psychology tutor at the University of Manchester, wrote, “In order to receive information from the environment we are equipped with sense organs, e.g. eye, ear, nose. Each sense organ is part of a sensory system which receives sensory inputs and transmits sensory information to the brain. … A major theoretical issue on which psychologists are divided is the extent to which perception relies directly on the information present in the stimulus. Some argue that perceptual processes are not direct, but depend on the perceiver’s expectations and previous knowledge as well as the information available in the stimulus itself.”
Which is an excellent point; if previous knowledge and expectations make up a part, if not all, of a perceived version of events, how are we supposed to accurately investigate a potentially paranormal location based on that? What I have found is that it can be done simply by removing bias. Or it can be done based on equipment alone, or with a rational investigator who fully understands their surroundings and has a foundation of rational behavior and rational responses. When you combine readings from an EMF detector, the monitoring of temperature, and the scrutinizing of audio and video recordings with a professional, rational investigator, perception is no longer limited to an individual’s viewpoint but morphs into something that is closer to fact, or to unbiased evidence that was captured perception-free.
So, what are we supposed to do with this perception-free evidence? Simply post it on a paranormal website or share it on YouTube or Facebook? How do we advance to doing scientifically defined and universally accepted paranormal research? If we find a way, we can extend it to UFO investigations as well. Ufology, in my opinion, falls under the paranormal phenomena umbrella, and techniques used in ghost-hunting can translate. I have tried this in my field work, using similar methods of evidence collection. This includes photo and video documentation, telepathy, and the interviewing of witnesses. I suppose we could submit our findings to scientific research institutes, but they are already burdened with real-world concerns. Or we could try to find an open-minded scientist, such as Michio Kaku, but then what? I do not have the answer. I only have what I would like to see, which is an open-minded scientific organization dedicated to studying the paranormal—a SETI Institute for all things paranormal, if you will. Guess what? There was one, called NIDSci (National Institute for Discovery Science), which was in operation between 1995 and 2004. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and privately financed, it was the brainchild of real-estate developer Robert Bigelow, whose goal was to research and support studies in the paranormal and fringe sciences, especially ufology.
Could an organization like NIDSci exist again, and what sort of funding would it need? Could we do even better than NIDSci, creating an organization that is run and paid for by forward-thinking scientists and activists instead of an eccentric billionaire (who rarely shared results)? There are many ways that funding could happen. Currently, funding for the SETI Institute is provided by a multitude of sources. There is no government funding for SETI; however, there are other astrobiology research projects happening at SETI that are sometimes funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Regardless, how does that help anyone now? Just by discussing the topic, though, I feel we are headed toward a better place. Imagine if ridicule was eliminated, bias gone, and instead we were open-minded to any claim or every claim of the paranormal. This may sound ludicrous, but stop and think about the implications for a moment. For example, I personally do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster or psychics (I believe Loch Ness to be an eel, and while some psychics are extremely accurate and I enjoy the work of Chip Coffey, a believer is not what I would call myself). With that said, I am a believer in Bigfoot, extraterrestrials, and crop circles. And despite my individual beliefs, I would most certainly entertain evaluating Loch Ness Monster evidence and psychic claims. Couple this open-mindedness with a scientific approach, and numerous areas of opportunity open for us. When bias is removed, so is judgment. When judgment is removed, we get more people submitting reports. And when we get more reports, the sample size grows exponentially, painting a rather large and complex paranormal algorithm.
Peter Davenport, founder of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), and Leland Bechtel, former MUFON State Director for Maine, have both said that nearly 90 percent of UFO encounters from around the world go unreported. This may be due in part to simply not knowing how to report a sighting, but fear of ridicule can play a large role as well. In a conversation that I had with NUFORC in March of 2014, we agreed that if witnesses could get past these obstacles, having a larger sample size of reports would only help further the research of the UFO phenomenon.
Understanding why this is important is a great first step. In my opinion, it is important to get as much data as possible, despite the presence or absence of belief. The raw data always gets processed, and what we are left with is much like that conversation between location and equipment that I described earlier (hint: perception-free evidence).
An example of how this process is in fact already occurring can be found in an apparent UFO sighting that took place at Acadia National Park in September of 2009. The Acadia Night Sky Festival sponsored a nighttime photography workshop, led by an astronomer, in the park. At around 8:00 p.m. EST, the workshop participants had set up their cameras near Eagle Lake, pointing toward the southwest, when a bright object appeared in the sky. On the website Phantoms & Monsters, one participant describes it as follows: “It seemed to come down in the sky, burn brightly, creating a cone of light shining toward the ground much like a streetlight, and fog-like light around it … ” It was observed for a few moments and then disappeared. Fortunately, the participants photographed the event. You can see the photo with a quick Google Image search for “Acadia UFO.”
MUFON received numerous reports about this “cone of light” from various areas in New England, the Eastern United States, and Canada, including Connecticut, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Nova Scotia, and Maine. However, despite the strangeness of the event—even for those who spend a good deal of time studying the sky—it turns out there was a practical explanation. In response to many concerned calls to local news stations, CNN reported that the cone of light was caused by an experimental rocket launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The agency explained that the light “came from an artificial noctilucent cloud formed by the exhaust particles” as the rocket entered the upper atmosphere. NASA said that “observation stations on the ground and in satellites will track the artificial noctilucent clouds created by the rocket for months” and that “data collected during the experiment will provide insight into the formation, evolution, and properties of noctilucent clouds, which are typically observed naturally at high latitudes.”
Oh perception, how vulnerable you can make us. How lovely your experiences can be. Also, what a great data point for the continuing conversation between equipment, location, and perceiver! A sighting occurred, pictures were taken, perceptions abounded, and an explanation was found. The perception of many of the witnesses followed an organic path to factual reality, not to a perceived reality. Overall, then, while the phenomenon was identified as not a UFO, the open-minded skepticism that occurred is a good lesson in how paranormal inquiries can be of valid concern and conducted for valid reasons.
Keep this thought in mind while reading the rest of this book. Some of the witness claims in the stories reported may seem fantastic and downright unbelievable, but always remember—it’s someone’s unique perception.