I retired from the police force in 2002. The encounter occurred in the middle of the night in September 2008 at my home in a rural area near Holland, Michigan, which sits on the coast of Lake Michigan. It had been a warm, calm, uneventful evening; my family was in bed. The last thing I remember was watching TV on the couch.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in the yard outside my home. It was dark and absolutely quiet. I was not dreaming; I was completely conscious. The silence was eerie. Ahead in the near distance I saw a pin-size light, then all of a sudden a very bright wave-like flash that seemed to move through and pass me, almost knocking me back a step. I then felt a presence behind me. I turned around to see three small gray beings just standing there. Shoulder to shoulder.
They were the classic, gray, science-fiction-like aliens standing at a height of about four feet. They had large, black, almond-shaped eyes and long slender arms and legs. Oddly enough, I was not afraid. It was as if I recognized them or somehow knew them. I did not feel intimidated in the least.
The being in the middle said that they needed my help. His lips did not move; communication was telepathic. His request was the same as you’d hear from a friend or neighbor. I willingly agreed to help. Something happened, but I don’t remember what it was. The next thing I remember is looking up and seeing a huge craft hovering. I see a second craft about four hundred feet away from the main one. I sense that time has passed since I first communicated with them but I can’t tell how much.
I am now in a semi-paralyzed state; very, very tired, as though I had done a lot of work. I am breathing heavy and damp with perspiration. It takes all of my strength to just stand up. My arms hang down at my sides and as I am looking up at the craft I notice something out of the corner of my eye. Laboriously and with all the strength I can muster, I look to my left and realize there are two other men (humans) standing near me. We are about six feet apart from each other. They are also looking up. I do not know who they are. They look to be in their thirties. Neither of them seems able to talk or move either. They look as paralyzed and tired as me. They are breathing heavily as well and looking up. There isn’t a sound to be heard or a breath of air moving.
A bright light at ground level is behind us and illuminates the area, including the craft hanging in the air; but I can not turn around to see the source. I then realized that the small gray beings are gone.
The next thing I remember is looking up at the craft in the night sky. There is a thunderous sound and an opening two- to three-hundred-feet wide appears in the sky. It is amazing! I can see blue sky and clouds through the opening—but it is still night time where I stand. Clouds are “turning into themselves” around the opening. I can think of no other way to explain it; the clouds are “turning into” themselves around the opening which is round. Then, in the blink of an eye, the largest craft flies into the opening, followed instantly by the second ship. Then the sky closes up.
Again I hear a loud clap of thunder. With that, I awaken from this strange state and find myself inside the house. However, my eight-year-old daughter is now sleeping on the living room floor, which is weird. What the hell just happened to me? I wonder. I grab my kids’ crayons and start drawing what I saw.
I notice it is about 5:30 A.M. At this point, I’m in a daze and a normal morning starts shortly thereafter. My wife goes to work, my daughter to school, and I don’t share my experience with anyone yet. As usual, my wife calls me from work later that day. She tells me that our daughter woke up in the middle of the night, around three-thirty, and saw a lot of bright flashing lights outside our upper roof dormer window. My wife told her to go back to bed but instead our daughter went to sleep on the living room floor. My jaw dropped to the floor when my wife told me this because I had not said anything to her about what had happened to me. I had received confirmation that my encounter had really happened.
Later, I talked with my daughter about that night and she said she saw about eleven flashes of light. That’s all she counted before she got scared and put her head underneath the covers. She waited a little while before looking again and, when she didn’t see the lights anymore, she ran up to tell my wife.
If my daughter awoke between three and three-thirty and I found myself back inside the house at five-thirty, what happened to me during those two plus hours? Why did I feel so tired? And, most importantly, why couldn’t I remember anything in between? I was sick with flu-like systems for a week after, which was odd because I seldom get the flu—especially at the end of summertime.
I filed a report with The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and they have been supportive and helpful. MUFON said that I’m one of only a few people who remember the hole in the sky. They also said it’s not unusual to only remember the beginning and the ending of such an experience.
Two scientists came up from Detroit and Indianapolis to do exhaustive testing and a complete search of my property. They inspected a small tree in the backyard that dropped dead only one week later. They also found some plants dying off and they took soil and leaf samples. I have not heard anything back as of this time. I believe the investigation is still ongoing.
There isn’t a day or an hour that goes by when I don’t think about this. The experience doesn’t run my life but I am constantly playing the incident over in my mind. This was an extraordinary experience, one I never thought would happen to me; but it did and my life will never be the same.
Afterward I was driven to make a model of the UFO and I also designed a rudimentary picture of the hole in the sky (see image on page 184). The photo below is of the model I made to depict what I saw. The craft had vein-like lines going around the outside of the main sphere. These red veins had a glossy appearance. The two smaller white globes on the ends of the beams seemed to glow slightly.
