My First Close Encounter

It was mid-summer, the year 1997, the year the Hale-Bopp comet was visible in the sky.

I was walking home from my friend's house around 11.30pm.

I was pretty tired and was daydreaming as I was walking.

As I turned the corner of the street to get onto my street where I was living, it was like someone clicked their fingers and snapped me out of my daydream.

I was extra aware of my surroundings, like a heightened awareness had come over me.

Perplexed as to how or why this shift in awareness had suddenly come about, I looked around my surroundings to see if there was anyone around me. There wasn't.

So, still perplexed but now wide awake and acutely aware of my surroundings, I continued to walk home.

Then I started to hear a strange vibrating-like noise come from the left-hand side of me. However, as I turned my head to try and locate this noise, it was like it was hovering just near my ear, staying fixed in its position.

And I could see out of the corner of my eye, very close to my face, a matrix of golden-orange-like digits of a liquid crystal digital watch start to appear.

I am now stood on the pavement, thinking... what the F is going on???

Then my attention was as if pulled to look up into the far distance.

The comet was behind the view I was looking at. It was a perfectly clear night, and amongst the glistening stars was one very bright orange-golden star. Or so I thought...

Suddenly, my stomach began to turn, and a sense of dread and fear that something was coming to get me washed over me.

I tried to brush the irrationality of this feeling off, but with the snap into awareness from my daydream state, this peculiar sound located to my left no matter where I turned, and this strange glowing orange lattice appearing to the left of my head, to be honest, I was starting to freak out.

I looked back up to the glowing star-like object and could not really distinguish if it was moving or not, so I stood next to a lamp post, using the lamp post as a guide to see if the object was moving closer to it as I stood still.

The object was indeed moving, but very slowly.

Now quite anxious as to what on earth was going on, I composed myself as best I could and continued to walk home.

A few metres on, it then felt like I had frozen, incapable of moving. Someone then walked out from a garden from behind a hedge, and he was startled by me just stood there.

The vibration-like noise now louder, the orange glowing matrix, lattice glowing to the side of my face, I didn't know what to do or say to this stranger. I just stood there and looked at him, then looked back at this light in the sky.

He looked at me, looked up too, then shook his head and got in his car.

I then looked at him as he looked up over his steering wheel, at me, then the sky. Then started his car.

I looked back up to the light, which just looked like a star, then suddenly, so fast that if you blinked you would have missed it, the light dropped in a straight line down, from way up high to now just above the rooftops of the houses way ahead of me.

You would have thought it disappeared and reappeared rather than actually travelled down, if it was not for the perfectly vertical streak of light it left behind it as it descended down to above the rooftops.

I turned to the man in his car, but he had just reversed and turned his car around and drove off...

So here I was, some crazy noise and visions to the left of my head but staying to my left as I turned around. A star that was definitely not a star, or a plane or a helicopter, involuntary freezing of my body's movement and a sense of dread.

I didn't know what to do. I was babbling at this point that this can't be real, that this can't be happening.

I thought, do I run back to my friend's? But he was miles far away. My house was quite close in front of me!

Do I bang on someone's door and get them to come out, or let me in?

I had so many thoughts and feelings going through me. I was freaking out big time.

I saw that the light was still quite far away from me, above the houses to my left, way in front of me. And my house I was living in at the time was not too far from me to the right.

So I just looked down to the floor and began to march home, walking very fast, mumbling to myself, saying everything was going to be OK, just get home, just get home!

I crossed the road to get on the side of the street where my house was, and then I froze again.

This time I cannot say whether I froze out of fear, or whether it was the same kind of freezing effect I had earlier. My mind was frantic now, and I couldn't discern why I stopped, but I did, and was still looking at the floor.

I was petrified to look up, but too scared to move on. I wanted to know where the light was.

I had an expectation of it being to my left, still some way in the distance before me. The worst fear I had was that it had changed its trajectory and was right above me.

I lifted my head up, and to my shock and horror it was still in front of me, but not to my left. It was above my house, as if waiting for me.

I just lost it. I remember babbling out loud, saying this can't be, I can't!

I am not good at judging sizes or distances of objects, but the light was right above the roof of my house by about 15 to 20 feet, I guess.

The light was a sphere of golden light, and it had hundreds of shards of light that shone from it, that would get dimmer as they got further away from the main orb.

And it was like it had a cloaking field or something around it, as the shards, beams of light seemed to cut off unnaturally.

And there was like a semi-circular section at the top and bottom of this field surrounding the light where it cut out unnaturally too.

I would say the solid orb of light had a diameter of around 15 to 20 feet, and was a perfect circle.

The shards of light that were shooting out from it were about 10 feet in length before getting unnaturally cut off.

Stood there transfixed by this orb of light, I then blacked out.

The next thing I remember is feeling this huge feeling of euphoria, like my whole body was like a field of light and energy, like I was millions of threads of light, and on each thread were hundreds of diamonds that were swaying and tingling.

And when these threads crossed or the diamonds collided, there would be like waves of further euphoria that would radiate out from the point of collision in a 360-degree fashion.

Then I could feel my feet. This beautiful feeling was leaving me. It was being drawn up my body.

There was no me amongst that beautiful feeling, just bliss.

But as the feeling was drawing up, I could feel my feet, then my shins, then my thighs and so on.

The first thought I had of a 'me' was standing on tiptoes as this feeling left my head with a pop sensation, and I was saying out loud, begging something or someone, "Please don't leave me."

I found myself now stood on the pavement, the beautiful feeling of euphoria gone, but I felt so clear. There were no thoughts. I could feel so much.

I could feel the gentle breeze around me, the small trees' leaves and branches swaying by the gentle breeze, along with the blades of grass to my right moving too.

I could actually feel it all in peace and clarity.

I could hear my heartbeat slow and loud, and as I came to, I could see a ripple come from out of my chest in front of me, rippling through the air horizontally.

The ripple had a slight golden-light-like tinge to it, and it was like the air was water.

I was like...

"Woooah"

And lifted my hands up to the ripple from my chest, and as I did that I could feel and see my hands parting the water-like air, the same way as if you were in fact in water and moved your arms through it, you can see and feel the contours of the water being disturbed by your arm movements.

It was like that, but much more delicate, and it was beautiful.

It was like the air was electric, energetic!

Then I thought... shit... the light...

And my mind started to lose this clarity and sensitivity as I began to think... and I was like, damn no, as if I knew that my thinking was severing some kind of connection to this feeling...

Then I had an intense sensation seem to pierce the right side of my head with a weird electrical, shrieking kind of noise. It was unpleasant.

I turned round to see a black and white cat staring at me. I was like, WTF, and as I looked at the cat, the noise I just heard got louder and louder and the cat's eyes went real strange.

Like they were vibrating, and the cat's body disappeared, and this, what I can only describe as a vortex of dark purples, greens and blacks, started to appear around the cat's eyes.

I remember turning away thinking WTF, then boom, I was feeling clear again.

I came to, I could see my heartbeat ripple the air again, I lifted my hands up the same as before...

I looked to my right and the cat came out from behind a wall, so I looked away quickly, not wanting a repeat of what just happened.

And then I thought, shit, the light...

I looked up and it was gone. I looked around the sky and then the streets, in the hope someone was there or had seen what happened, so as to confirm I was not crazy, but there was no one about.

I started to walk to my house that was a stone's throw away, then it felt like something splatted on the top of my head...

I then felt this sensation, what I thought felt like a goo of some sort, begin to roll down my head and grow in size as it rolled down my head, into my ears, mouth and all around me.

I tried pulling it off me but couldn't.

And it was wrapping around me. I got the first glimpse of it as it wrapped around my left arm.

It was like a translucent hologram, consisting of black and specks of purple and dark green.

I tried grasping at it and pulling it off my arm, but I couldn't.

I then buckled over as if to be sick from the feeling of this stuff going inside me, and for some reason I then, with gritted teeth, snarled out the words "get the fuck off me" as I kind of made the motion of throwing someone off my back!

And as I stood there swaying on my feet, as I was outstretched, the sky was pure black.

I was like WTF???

I began to look to the street level again and could see the blackness end and the hue of the dark sky and the stars.

Confused by what I was seeing, I looked back up and my first perception was that there was a pure, and I mean pure black triangle cut in the sky!

I stood there confused, looking at this black triangle that seemed like it was wobbling, dangling. It was so weird.

Then on each corner a boomerang-shaped red light appeared on all three corners...

At this point I froze in fear, as my brain registered that there was in fact a triangular object above my head and not a hole in the sky.

I was, however, frozen solid. My mouth went bone dry all down to my throat.

I felt that if I moved I would break, that if someone hit me I would shatter into glass.

Then the lights on each corner were green, but I never saw them actually change from red to green, and then they were red again, but again I didn't notice them change colour.

I was frozen there looking up, being what I can only describe as hypnotised, unable to move.

In my falling-apart psyche, I thought that if I actually could pinpoint these lights changing colour, then at least I would have some form of control over what's going on.

The air around me and the triangle was vibrating, and was changing colours, like again a vortex was coming from the triangle.

The colours were like if you drop oil into water and you get that film of colours that sit on the surface of the water.

Then a whitish-yellow light came on in the centre of the triangle, and I was like "noooo", and with every ounce of strength I had left I broke free and managed to move.

I got to my front door and was shaking really bad and babbling to myself again.

I was shaking so bad I couldn't get the key in the door without great effort, and then even more effort to turn the key...

I couldn't grip the key with my hands properly. I desperately tried using both hands, and had to place my hand on the right hand on the key, push my right elbow into my abdomen, and use my left arm to push down on my right arm to keep my arms and hand still enough to turn the key as I pushed my weight against my arms.

I got indoors and turned back to see the triangle was still outside!

I looked upstairs and didn't know what to do.

Do I go and wake up who I was lodging with at the time and tell them to come outside?

I was babbling though, a wreck. Do I phone my friend? But I couldn't even pick up the phone for shaking.

Pretty much delirious by now, I could hear all manner of things, noises and voices rushing round my chaotic mind.

I opened the windows downstairs and the patio doors on the extension of the house.

I spent a few moments hanging out the windows and going out into the back garden looking at this triangle above the house.

I then sat on the doorstep in the hope that a car or someone would come down the road and see the triangle and confirm I was not going insane!

Then I saw a whitish orb appear in front of me and it rippled as I heard a soft voice say:

"this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, they want you to go to them, not to just take you"

I don't know what or where the voice came from as I was delirious by this point, but I looked up at the triangle and thought to myself that the voice was right.

I propped the door open with a shoe, so I didn't have to go through all the ordeal of having to open it again.

And walked out, under the triangle and down the street towards the nearby playing field.

I don't know why I did walk that way, I just felt compelled to do so.

The triangle silently, slowly followed me above and stopped as I stopped at the alleyway leading to the playing field.

I looked down the darkness of the alleyway and was not strong enough. I couldn't go any further and ran back to the house.

The triangle came back also.

I sat there for a while waiting again for someone else to come along and witness what I was seeing, but then the triangle began to fly away.

This was the first time I got an understanding of its vertical size, as when it flew away there were two lights shining up the back of it that were not visible from below it.

I would say that each side of the triangle was the length of a standard coach/bus here in the U.K.

And from what I could see from the light beaming up the back of it, I'd say at least as tall as a coach.

What was so strange about it was its blackness. It was pure black I have never seen before.

After it flew off, I locked up the house and went to bed, but I couldn't sleep.

I could feel and hear things all around me.

As I sat on my bed hugging my knees, I saw a beam of pale green light come from the closed curtains and beam on the wall...

So I got my duvet and put it over the curtains and it was gone.

Then from a solid wall to my left the beam of light shot across the room and onto the wall to my right.

I was falling apart even more now, as this was not stopping, even in the safety of my room.

I remember spitting on my hands and trying to rub the light off the wall as I was breaking down.

So I got on my bed and closed my eyes, but could hear so much noise and voices, and I saw rushing colours and patterns on what looked like lots of orbs of rectangular screens or lights going in various directions.

I would open my eyes again and saw something forming in the room, like a being starting to appear, so I closed my eyes again and just saw all the lights and screens or whatever they were.

Then right in the middle of all this chaos in my mind, in the distance was a white screen and it would move in a pattern...

Up, stop, up, stop, forward, right, right, down, forward and so on...

And every now and then it would emit a pulse of sorts that would calm me and make me feel nauseous but relaxed.

I could feel myself falling into a trance and felt and saw two silhouettes of glowing women, who were calming me and reassuring me as I fell deeper into this trance.

But I felt I was going somewhere, floating somewhere, and fought the trance and snapped out of it.

That was painful to do so and nauseating...

And I came to, to find myself climbing out of my bedroom window onto the flat roof of the extension of the house.

And above the back garden was the triangle. Waiting!

I leapt back into the bedroom and got back on my bed.

I would close my eyes again and watch this white light/screen move around, then would snap out of it and would consciously go to the window and look outside.

In the distance, what I perceived as very far away, I could see a red light to the right and one far away to the left, and a point of light would appear and go from one to the other, and then what I assume was another, but I could not see that one as it was behind the house.

I then kind of watched the screens again but would open my eyes periodically whilst still feeling the sensation of it moving in my mind.

I then went to the window and got out on the roof of the extension and then said internally, "come on then, I am ready."

The point of light broke off from its flight path between the red points of light and came over to me, and it was the triangle.

But as before, I did not have the courage to see anything through, and went back into my room and looked out my window until I saw all the lights disappear.