Searchlight in the Sky

I’m not sure what the numbers are on this, but there are people from all walks of life who have had incidental encounters with UFO’s, and as of a few years ago, I became a statistic.  The occurrence happened over thickly wooded hunting grounds behind my house, and since I live in an area which used to have regular and routine military fly-overs by cargo planes, fighter jets, and coast guard helicopters, my initial reaction was to pass it off as that.  So, when the “incident” was actually taking place I didn’t realize how memorable it would wind up being because, in my personal experience, when I’m used to seeing certain things I tend to try and make things I’m not so used to seeing, fit into the mold of what I have the most experience with.   It’s like that with Ghost Hunting, too. If there’s something that doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t seem to fit into the “normal” range of expected behaviors I try to logically think it all out by applying the reasoning of “normal” occurrences.  At any rate, you’re probably waiting for the actual experience, so here it is:

My husband picked me up from work at about 9:10 pm the night of the “incident”.  It was a cold time of the year; fall, winter, or autumn.  I’m unsure of the exact date, as I write this, but I think it was more likely in the late autumn, early winter, time of year.   We were in his Tundra, which ran pretty quietly because it was new.  It was as dark as it was going to be, that night.  Meaning, it wasn’t near dusk, and it wasn’t marginally dark or light out.  It was as dark then as it would have been at 2:00 am.

The drive home was as normal as always, but as we reached our driveway I noticed there was an orange-ish light in the sky over the trees behind our house.  Now that I think of it, the light wasn’t incredibly high – just a little higher than the trees, as I viewed it from the truck.  To be more specific, the orange light was a “ball of light” with an orange spotlight beaming off it down toward the ground. The entire event seemed quite plausible, all things considered, albeit a bit unusual.

I remember remarking to my husband that it was awful late for the Coast Guard to be out looking for something, or someone, and I was pretty sure they were missing their mark, because if they were searching over water they weren’t over a very large body.  The nearest bay or ocean  point is quite a distance from where the orange light was hovering, and the river is about 2 miles behind the light (as seen from our driveway).  I remember having thoughts of who, or what, they might be searching for – an escape prisoner?  Exciting, but improbable.  A criminal suspect, in general?  This could be possible, I suppose, although this manner of searching made very little sense to me since I’ve never seen it used here in Maine.  Along with that, I quickly wondered where all the local law enforcement personnel were, considering they’d really have to access that forested area by way of, at the very least, my neighbor’s driveway, and that is clearly visible from my house and yard.  Yet, there was nothing that indicated anything out of the ordinary was happening around us or on our street.

So, naturally, being the curious person that I am, I rolled down my window and – literally – moved my head so my right ear was out the window.  I wanted to hear the chopper-blades going around, and feel the beat of it as they spun.  I’ve been home plenty of times when the Coast Guard has flown overhead. Our house starts shaking when they aren’t even within a mile, so I knew we’d be shaking as we headed up the driveway because – what I thought was the Coast Guard Helicopter – was floating still, in the air above the trees, within a couple of football field lengths away, IF that.  I mean, if I was speaking with you in person right now at my house I could point to “just over there” and tell you “it was RIGHT… THERE.”  I could have run to it, over the barbed wire fences, through the field and trees, in 10 minutes time, no joking around. It was really that close.

But as I hung my head out the window I heard … nothing.  I listened more intensely and with a look that exhibited my “well… that’s weird” thought, I rolled the window back up and sort of laughed it off to my husband.  The whole incident happened so quickly I didn’t have a whole lot of time to really express the oddness of the situation out loud.  I just remember thinking I if they have a quiet version of the helicopter that flies over our house in the night time, they should use it all the time, but that maybe it wasn’t a Coast Guard helo, maybe it was some other agency.

As we progressed up the driveway and my window was rolling up I remarked, again, to my husband that it’s usually much louder in the day time and I wondered what they’re looking for, when, just as we reached the last 10 or 15 feet of where the driveway opens up and gets wider, he pushed the garage door opener remote.  When the garage door began to open it shook the wall it’s on and this caused our motion lights to turn on which, in turn, lit up our yard pretty brightly. Just as that happened, the orange light in the sky, which seemed to have been floating there in the same spot for the whole time I was observing it, shot off to the right (toward Topsham/Brunswick) so fast I vaguely remember there being an orange light-streak trailing behind it.  Now whether that was just the way my eyes perceived the event, or if the light streak really was left there in the sky, I can’t tell.  I don’t know.   All I know is.  Stuff Got Real.  Fast.

Both my husband and I were quite dumbfounded by the event.  I reacted immediately by asking if he saw that, and asking him what the heck that was, but neither of us could explain it rationally in terms of “logical” or “natural” reasoning.  The orange light either retracted the searchlight beam, or cut it off altogether, and streaked across the sky so incredibly fast it left us without explanation or description that would not lead to “UFO” as a response.   Because, simply, we could not identify it as being “known”.  We know of nothing that flies that fast, from a stand still, or even with a running start. It took off too fast.  If there were people in that, they were squished to the back side of the vehicle and you could probably bring a mop bucket to the scene to clean up the mess, if you catch my drift.

So anyway, that was my personal UFO experience and it happened right here in Mid-Coast Maine.

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