TECHNOIR (3 page)

            For now, the strange lights in the sky remain the ultimate mystery, yet this is very real: In the aftermath of a sighting, some witnesses of the Phoenix Lights told Dr. Kitei they went through a mental metamorphosis, a rebirth, as if their soul had shed a proverbial cocoon. There are skeptics, however, who say seeing a UFO or something that sure as heck looks like one, will undoubtedly twist someone’s mind in a way that makes them think they’ve become the chosen one. There is no psychological disorder for obsessive-compulsiveness post-Close Encounter; professional skeptics, however, are familiar with this behavior, saying it’s fairly widespread. They have seen this infatuation in numerous subjects, and not just from those who believe they’ve seen an extraterrestrial craft from far, far away. But also from those who claim to have seen ghosts, Big Foot, or some creature popping his head out of a lake.

            “If you really believe you have seen a UFO, that is very powerful,” said Ben Radford, a paranormal investigator and managing editor of the magazine
Skeptical Inquirer.
“They feel like they’ve been selected by a higher power because it is such a rare event and it is very meaningful to them. They feel that the world, or a god, or the aliens have chosen them. They’re not liars, they’re not crazy. They’ve experienced something they cannot explain. The problem is, just because that person can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it is not explainable.”

            That may be true for some cases and some individuals who think they’re contactees, say believers. But there are others who have had experiences, contend believers, where the evidence against Radford’s logic is so tantalizing.

            Late in my interview with Dr. Kitei, she was made aware of a sighting that occurred in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, in 2007. One that took place during (and over) a peace rally and was caught on video. “That’s really interesting,” she says. “Besides making their presence known in a gentle way, one of the main reasons I feel that they are coming here is to wake us up to what we're doing to our planet and each other...before it is too late. Could it just be a coincidence that ‘they’ appeared during a peace gathering?”

            What is striking about the Cleveland sighting is that it has its own Roy Neary. But the contactee, Sam Phillips, wasn’t asked to come on board for a long, long cosmic trip. Instead he was told to save the world. A message many contactees say was given to them as well. Phillips has long been a fixture of Cleveland’s local music scene. He’s an accomplished drummer and “hand snapper,” and once appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show. When interviewed for this book, however, he was homeless and sleeping at the residences of friends and family. This makes even the mildly skeptical wince at the thought that Phillips may be seeking a little celebrity so to sell his story and purchase a warm bed with roof over it. Nevertheless, when I interviewed him for this book he seemed like a stand-up, level-headed guy, even though he was on the brink of sleeping under a bridge.

            It was late into the night during a 24-hour anti-war rally in downtown Cleveland, when Phillips and others around him turned their attention to a clear sky that stretched on for eternity. At first it didn’t register. But then it came into focus:
A silver orb
that appeared to be spinning and hovering above one of the city’s tallest building, the Key Bank Tower. He caught it on video and his clip appeared on CBS News. And since that night, his life hasn’t been the same. He said he’s lost half his friends because of
it
. The Cleveland orb.

            “This is not about me,” said Phillips. He admitted he’d become a little nuts over what he saw that night. “There’s a pattern here. There’s a riddle here. And I want answers. I want an explanation.”

            Two days before Phillip’s sighting, Clevelanders familiar with the local UFO lore (see Chapter 2) were surprised by the number of contrails that were cutting through the skies of northeast Ohio. One local radio personality, Mike Trivisonno of WTAM 1100 AM, even began experiencing UFO déjà vu.

            According to the Cleveland Ufology Project or CUP, his talk show was getting phone calls from listeners who said, once again, there were an unusual number of contrails and streaking military jets over the skies of Cleveland. Similar contrails were seen after a rash of UFO sightings two years earlier. Trivisonno decided to take his radio show outside hoping to see a UFO. Cleveland and Lake Erie have been tagged UFO hotspots by CUP, which has investigated 50 sightings since 2004. CUP started in 1952 and is the oldest UFO group this side of the northern hemisphere.

            “That whole week [before his sighting] there were weird chemical trails [contrails] in the sky,” said Phillips, who offers an explanation as to why. “They caught something on radar and scrambled some jets.” Local Air Force officials refused to answer local media inquiries into the contrails. But there’s more: “An earthquake happened in northern Ohio just a few days before,” said Phillips, who wondered if the earthquake occurred when the UFOs entered our atmosphere via some type of space or time portal.

            Nevertheless, this much is clear – something had triggered his mind, his very soul, to become addicted to that thing that was glowing and spinning above the peaceniks. But what? Was his own mind playing tricks on him? Maybe it was just a balloon tethered with a long string to a tall pole on top of the building. But what about the “message” he had heard, a message similar to what Dr. Kitei and other contactees have reported? Can a balloon make you feel like you need to save the Earth?

            These contactees shouldn’t be dismissed, because so many of them are repeating the same story: A life force from another world, or perhaps a time traveler born millions of years from now, had told them, telepathically, the Earth is in danger and needs the attention of concerned humans. Phillips believed the spinning orb was trying to send him a message – a warning the Earth was on the brink. He, like Dr. Kitei, believes it wasn’t a coincidence the sighting took place over a peace rally. During the sighting he ironically said our “brothers and sisters are going to come down from the universe and humble our ass.” When he got home that night, he slept for three days, he said.

            Another incredible example of someone being “mentally touched” and given an Apocalyptic message by a UFO – in this case an actual extraterrestrial, apparently – is the very young “Isabelle” (not her real name). Isabelle’s experience, however, is distinct from Roy Neary’s obsession. In this case, Isabelle’s story, when matched to Hollywood’s editorial license, is much closer to the extraterrestrial warning offered in “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” a film originally from 1951 and remade in 2008. The first movie sent a chill across a Cold War country with a plot that is simple but unique: an extraterrestrial visits Earth to warn us of our impending self-inflicted doom.

            In 1994, in the small rural town of Ruwa, Zimbabwe, the doe-eyed Isabelle and 62 of her grade school classmates, all under 12, allegedly came face-to-face with someone who had “black eyes the size of rugby balls.” This Close Encounter of the Third Kind occurred at a time when a wave of UFO sightings was sweeping that part of Africa. During a recess at the Ariel School, the grade-school aged kids were outside, while the supervising adults were in a conference. What happened next is an astonishing Close Encounter. A story their teachers, their parents, and even the school’s strict principle profoundly believed was the truth.

            As the kids played, they saw three silver orbs buzzing above their school. The orbs disappeared and in an instant reappeared, descending nearby into a rugged field. One child told investigators, it sounded “as if someone was playing a flute” as the craft hovered and descended. One of the beings was then suddenly on top of the craft. Another came out of an open door and was on the ground, and as one child said, he appeared to be “hopping above the grass.” The kids ran to him (or her). Some of the younger kids, as they came closer, started to panic. Others apparently kept their cool. They noticed “he” was wearing a shiny black suit that was skintight. His hair was black and long and his eyes – “His eyes looked evil,” reluctantly offered one of the students to investigators.

            One of the students holding their mental ground was Isabelle. And like two cats separated by a window, Isabelle and the alien starred at each other. “They seemed astonished at what we were,” she told investigators. She couldn’t look for long, she added. She turned away. The eyes were shocking. Mind bending. What she wouldn't know, at least initially, was that the extraterrestrial may have been trying to reach her through vision or telepathy. If it were the case, she would be of a handful of human beings to make eye-to-eye contact with an extraterrestrial from another world. An extraterrestrial who tried, at the very least, to give her a message.

           
Isabelle
was later interviewed by
Dr. John Mack
, a respected professor of Harvard, who studied UFOs, focusing mostly on the Alien Abduction phenomenon. Tragically in 2004, Mack was struck and killed by a drunk driver in London during a conference. Mack’s family was convinced there was no hint of conspiracy or foul play behind the professor’s untimely death. Yet, one conspiracy suggested the British and US governments, which were secretly exchanging advanced technology with extraterrestrials for abductees, took Mack’s life because he was slowly unraveling the galactic arrangement and would soon reveal it to the universe. Nonetheless, Mack’s research into UFOlogy brought respectability to the field. His passing a tremendous set-back to UFOlogy. Like many UFOlogists he endured a witch-hunt to discredit his work; in this case by Harvard. His government funding, while sometimes in jeopardy, would never end up being cut, though. His private funding, on the other hand, especially from the likes of Laurence Rockefeller, who gave him tens-of-thousands, was always secure.

            Mack quietly asked Isabelle to recall what the black-eyed extraterrestrial had told her. “I think to want to know that people are making harm on this world and we must not get too techknowledged,” she said to Mack, her eyes sad, peering into an unwanted future.

            Techknowledged? Mack was surprised the child would use such a word. Another child told Mack the reason “they” landed was to “tell us something is going to happen.”

            These children from Zimbabwe are an incredibly small number of humans who apparently have been given a warning of some kind by an extraterrestrial. No doubt these apparent aliens from another world or time have been selective in who they contact on this planet. Their choices seemingly not perfect. But perhaps effective. One child from the Ariel School put the visitor’s message succinctly: “They were telling us the world was going to end...and we don’t look after the planet.” She added, “Like all the trees will go down and there will be no air. People will be dying. Those thoughts came from the man – the man’s eyes.” As another student put it, “It just popped up in my head.”

            Which begs another question about the UFO phenomenon. Do these visitors know something – perhaps an event in time, an event that takes place in our near future, one where technology plays a role – that tragically ends the human race as we know it?

Strange lights are appearing again over the lake with the creepy name...is it a hoax or UFOs?

            On a brisk fall night, the crescent moon over Lake Erie is a blood-red orange. In the background, dark waves lap rhythmically onto the beach. It is picturesque in many ways. But the serenity is about to be shattered. Out some unknown distance over the lake, several pulsating lights chillingly materialize from nowhere.

           
The scene
was captured on video, put on Youtube, and downloaded hundreds-of-thousands of times. The lake front is not far from the hardscrabble city of Cleveland, Ohio, and the lights are described as “orbs.” Out of thin air they appear over the lake, and sometimes witnessed near a local nuclear power plant. Apparently, the “Lake Erie Lights” have returned once again, and they have locals talking. Some loudly, some in hushed tones. But some are wondering whether this recent wave of UFO sightings over the lake with the creepy name is the real thing or a hoax.

            If the new lights and their videos are indeed a hoax, it would be a shame for UFOlogy because Lake Erie has a long history of mind-boggling paranormal activity.

            To start, the lake is named after a Native American tribe called the “Erielhonan,” meaning the people with “long tails.” They were also called the “Cat” or “Raccoon” people. What’s more, the region was a hot-bed of abolitionism leading up to the Civil War, a time when the locals on the highlands south of the city told outsiders beware of the lake’s “Wizard Lights.” Some thought they were distressed ships on fire, but daybreak revealed no wreckage, dead bodies or survivors.

            One hundred and fifty years later, on a cold winter night in 1988, a UFO described as large as “the Goodyear Blimp” appeared on the lake. Stunned witnesses said at first the craft seemed to be struggling to get off a sheet of ice that was not far from the lake's shore. As a crowd of witnesses grows, the craft sets loose a squadron of smaller, triangular-shaped craft that buzz the witnesses. A local Coast Guard team sees the entire episode unfold right in front of their eyes, but within hours the team is apparently strong-armed into silence by military officers from Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. What’s more, the civilians who do see the oblong craft will soon have their homes buzzed by an alleged unmarked black helicopter. It’s one of the best-documented UFO cases in the history of the US. Twenty years later, in an interview for this book, one of the Coast Guard personnel there that night is still not sure what he saw – or is he?