"I think that we all know that something's going on." Congressman Andy Ogles UAP Caucus member, Border Security Caucus member

EXPERIENCER

I share my firsthand UAP experiences to illustrate these things happen and to demonstrate it's okay to discuss them. These narratives may help someone, and a goal of helping is always worthwhile. 

August 2022

"Orange Marmalade Orb"

Pike National Forest, Colorado

For me it was just another backpacking trip in the sprawling national forest I live near. Starting at Deer Creek trailhead, I shouldered my pack and steadily hiked six miles into the interior. At a high pass I left the trail to ascend 12,441-foot Kataka Mountain. On its apex I watched a lethal storm zap 14,050-foot Mount Bierstadt, 14,258-foot Mount Evans, and The Sawtooth, a narrow and well-named ridge that connects these two "14ers" a few miles from where I was standing. With storms gathering over Kataka Mountain, I hastily descended, recrossed the high pass, summitted 11,980-foot Tahana Mountain, and set my sights for a stunted evergreen forest high on the flanks of 13,523-foot Epaulet Mountain for the night.

     Due to off-and-on-rain, I set up my tarp in a low A-frame and crawled underneath. Perched at 11,800 feet, it was quite the campsite with quite the view. I ate dinner and happily dozed off. It had been a long day. I was awoken around 2:00 a.m. by a strange, thick, orange light filtering through the stunted trees that surrounded my little campsite. I stared at it for a few seconds, and though I had never seen anything like it, it was met with indifference. I plopped my head down and fell back asleep.

     A minute later, while lying supine, I opened my eyes due to a compulsion to look at something, though I knew not what. In a seamless motion I rolled onto my side and precisely focused on a red-orange orb hovering two miles to the northwest. What on Earth? Next to me was my digital camera with its twenty-power telephoto lens. When I reached for it to photograph what I was seeing, I felt taking a photo was immoral, that what I was seeing was meant only for me. I put it back down.  

     Just as I focused on this strange object my consciousness moved toward it. Instead of being two miles away, "I" was a quarter-mile from it. Now I could really see it. It hovered over The Sawtooth and had a thin yellow corona. It looked like the sun, plasma, lava, energy. It somehow looked like knowledge, a living embodiment of understanding. It was alive, a churning gob of orange marmalade that sent me a message, non-verbal and not a message in the traditional sense. It was pure understanding. "We are here. Goodbye." Somehow I knew that meant, "Yes, we do exist. We will see you again, Erik." The object slowly disappeared into a dissipating storm within ten seconds of me finding it. I collapsed into a deep sleep.

     I woke uncharacteristically late from an unusually deep sleep. I had no recollection of the event. I packed up my campsite and climbed toward the top of Epaulet Mountain. Across the tundra a massive westward view opened. I stared at The Sawtooth. Something had been in my campsite. I figured it was a bunny, maybe even an elk. It didn't matter. I roamed the high country, summited 13,575-foot Rosalie Peak and 12,444-foot Bandit Peak, passed a herd of seventy elk, and camped on top of 11,495-foot Royal Mountain. With rain threatening again, I set up my tarp in my preferred A-frame style. 

     I had a fuzzy memory, something about a red orb. Despite having basically no recollection of the visitation, I took a four- by six-foot blaze orange signal panel I always pack with me and laid it on the ground, pinning its corners with rocks so it wouldn't blow away. I felt I was going to be "taken," but by whom and to where I did not know. The panel would help searchers locate my camp if I went missing. I had never felt the need to do this despite camping more than a thousand nights. This second night was uneventful. On day three I returned to Deer Creek trailhead and drove home at dusk.

     The moment I entered my home and dumped my gear on the floor I experienced a flood of memory I describe as "having the top of my head cut off and then having a five-gallon bucket of ice cold memories poured inside it." It was all there in indescribable detail. The light, The Sawtooth, the orb, the message, the sleep. Memory knew no bounds. That night I submitted a report to MUFON out of fear of forgetting what I was remembering. I wrote to the MUFON investigator, "My biggest struggle has been accepting the authenticity. I've been hard on myself and have caused myself much anguish. I feel like a liar, a fraud, that it was a silly dream I read too much into."

     I completed extensive research by contacting the U.S. Forest Service, two county sheriff's departments, three nearby airports, a college that operates a nearby observatory, a State of Colorado agency that maintains a nearby high-altitude road, and a volunteer committee familiar with the area. Nothing explained what I saw.

     Two days later I contacted a well-known UAP experiencer and friend of mine. I shared a condensed version of my story and asked, "Would you be able to access insight into this incident that I myself cannot access?" His response was eerie. He recited details that only I knew. With almost supernatural acumen he helped clean up a confusing timeline where reality had melded with anomaly. It was like he knew more about my experience than I did. His comments remain inexplicable.

     For the next six days every waking moment was consumed with me seeing an orange light in my mind's eye. Replaying the event became an obsession. Recall knew no limits. I was hypervigilant and easily startled and didn't sleep for 72 hours. I was scared of the dark. I became upset when seeing round or orange or red objects. I felt detached from everyone, detached from reality. I somehow still went to work. The owner of the mental health practice I worked for took me aside. "What's going on? You look terrible."

     I thought I was losing my mind. I contacted another person in the UAP community for guidance. He also offered uncanny insight by mentioning details he had no way of knowing. It was high strangeness. To be honest, I wasn't as interested in his enigmatic wisdom as one may think. I just didn't want to feel alone.

     When the foaming seas calmed a month after my experience, a friend asked what it was like. I explained, "I'm different. But I don't know in what way. That orb has known me my entire life. When I saw it over The Sawtooth, I realized it was the same age as the rocks that comprise that ridge. It's as natural as a redwood or pond or whale. It was not made by any thing or any one."

April 2023

"Mountaintop CE5"

San Isabel National Forest, Colorado

On the second high-desert peak I climbed that day, 7,423-foot Table Mountain, I attempted CE5 for twenty minutes. I had attempted CE5 techniques a few times about a year earlier and had no results. It was the same this time. Or so I had thought. I descended Table Mountain, hiked out, and drove home to Colorado Springs, arriving at 6:00 p.m.

     At 9:00 p.m., while sitting on my couch working on my laptop, I experienced an overwhelming wave of panic, one of fearfully deep insight. I so strongly sensed the presence of a force staring at me in my livingroom that I anticipated something to materialize. I next experienced a crystal realization that we 2023 humans are incredibly primitive. In an attempt to ease my anxiety I put my work away and tried watching one of my favorite comedians. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I saw myself in his tragically primitive appearance.

     I shut the laptop, took a few deep breaths, and glanced at my home's stone fireplace a few feet away. Uneasiness consumed me. My stomach churned like I was on a rollercoaster. I said aloud in astonishment, "A stone fireplace? That's what the Pilgrims used!" A bizarre blend of panic and insight paralyzed me. I intensely realized any world beyond the one I was accustomed to lay beyond human comprehension. Where could such singular insight so profoundly manifest?

     The following morning I contacted a UAP experiencer and friend of mine in pursuit of insight. He replied, "I think sometimes we ask for something to happen yet don't understand the many ways we can be shown something. It may not be what we asked for, but for some reason what we're shown is what we need. The universe understands our requests and manifests accordingly. I think the insight you received was no accident. The civilization we have created is incredibly primitive, temporary."

December 2024

"Orb Squadron One"

Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, New Mexico

As my friend and I hung out in her camper van at night a few miles into the gravelly and scraggly New Mexico desert, I glanced out the open side door and noticed a small, round, orange object low in the western sky. Presuming it to be a low-orbit satellite, and considering I like to look at things in the sky, I tried to focus on it. When I reacquired it, it disappeared. A moment later I regained it. The object brightened for a second or two, remained fully illuminated for ten, then dimmed to black over the next one or two seconds. It vanished for a minute or two only to reappear in the same spot with the same brightening, brightened, dimming, gone pattern. As it traced a looping path across the sky, I said to my friend, "Come look at this."

     Three identical objects joined it. Most moved upward and to the left. One traced a ‘J’-shaped path. Others flew in coordination while maintaining precise separation. The brightening and dimming intrigued us. The objects did not shine. They glowed. They didn’t illuminate when aircraft flew within a few miles of them. They were nine miles from us. After forty minutes of observation they vanished. How strange.

     While camping in the same area during the following three nights we didn't see a thing. The next night they were in the same spot. This time they were five miles away. After an hour they vanished. When I got home I submitted a MUFON report and was interviewed, and a video my friend recorded was examined. Between me, my friend, and the investigator we found no Earthly explanations. I completed extensive research into the matter by contacting a county sheriff's department, two nearby airports, a local city police department, the local New Mexico State Police station, and managers of a nearby wind farm. Nothing. Case closed. 

     Or so we had thought. Nine days after the second sighting, my friend and I started talking about the objects while at her home back in Colorado Springs. We decided to watch the video together for the first time. When an orb came into view on her phone she got a pit in her stomach and said, "I'm really scared." She closed the video. I assured her, "It's okay. We don't have to watch it."

     Without warning the lights in the room aggressively flickered. I asked, "Do you see that?" She replied. "I don't want to do this."  But what was "this"? A wave of dread washed over me, and I couldn't resist the compulsion to stare at a spot fifteen feet in front of us. Though I saw nothing, something was there. And it was staring at me. My hands sweat, my chest pounded. I was paralyzed engaging with whatever was watching me. My friend pulled a blanket over her head and hid. I felt I was being stared at by an invisible grizzly bear – something massive, primal, terrifying.

     After two minutes she managed, "Let's go in my room." We swiftly absconded. She locked the door, hid under blankets, and pleaded with it to not scare or harm us. But what was "it"? In her bedroom all she could do was hide, and I was unable to speak. My mind processed a garbled message. I somehow knew we were engaging with a part of the orbs that had followed us home. Ten minutes later we felt entirely normal. Strangely, we did not discuss what had happened.

     The next morning my friend asked something to the effect of, "What the hell was that?" I replied, "One of the objects found us and told us, 'This isn't for you.'  I think it didn't know we recorded it until last night."  She said, "It's funny you say that. I felt like a frightened child being scolded for seeing something I should not have seen."

August 2025

"Orb Squadron Two"

San Luis Valley, Colorado

I couldn't sleep. At 1:00 a.m. I walked out to the backyard of my rural San Luis Valley home. As I casually glanced north I noticed a small amber object cruising on the level and eastward, one-quarter up from the horizon. It was approximately three miles away, due north. I went to the frontyard for a better look. Three similar objects joined it in flight. Out of the black sky they brightened, then dimmed, then vanished, then brightened back where they were first seen.

     They flew singularly and in formations, and the most common formation was one vertically above another while maintaining precise separation. A few times they flew in precise triangular formations. They were silent, granted they were miles away. They most often glowed white but also morphed to aqua, amber, gold, green, and yellow. Bright orbs traveled east. Dim orbs, barely noticeable, traveled west.

     I went inside and woke my friend, who had been witness to the Orb Squadron One sightings in New Mexico eight months prior. "You gotta come outside. The orbs we saw in New Mexico are back." She replied with apprehension, "Really?" We went outside armed with two smartphones and a pair of eight-power binoculars. As she gazed north she noticed the same light and flight behaviors we saw in New Mexico. The similarity of the sightings spooked her. Perhaps they had returned for us. But for what? 

     She retreated inside. I, on the other hand, jumped in my car and accelerated due north up a local highway flat as a pool table and straight as an arrow. The plan was to drive three miles to get a better look. They'd let me get within a few miles, then dim, disappear, and brighten to appear a few miles ahead of their prior positions. I ended up pursuing them 31 miles in 23 minutes. When I stopped at the top of a pass, they stopped three miles to the northeast and repeated the same flight and light behaviors they displayed near my house. My friend called me, worried. My time observing them was done.

     My friend and I rendezvoused and agreed there were no Earthly explanations for what we saw. Unbelievably, the orbs offered encore displays three other nights this month. Same time, position, behavior, duration. We have accumulated fifty images and a few videos. But either way we won't forget.

    Timely regional sightings mirrored mine. A few days before my first sighting, a person observed a white orb in broad daylight a few miles south of my home (NUFORC Report 191493). He was less than a thousand feet from the object and watched it for a half-hour. Hours later he observed a craft traversing the valley at high speed.

     A week before my sighting, a white orb was seen by two people thirty miles north of my home (NUFORC Report 191277). They described the object as a "bright and large glowing orb, off-white or slightly yellowish" and bigger than a commercial aircraft.

     Three months before my sighting, a person watched what I believe to be the same objects I saw (NUFORC Report 189543). He observed lights "moving steadily from west to east in a straight trajectory," then disappearing and reappearing "back at or near its original position." The moment I watched the video submitted with the report I said, "That's it. That's what I saw." This occurred twenty miles south of my home.

     Seven months before my sighting, a man stood thirty miles south of my home, watching a group of orbs brighten, cruise, and dim to black (NUFORC Report 179837). He observed them for 45 minutes beginning 3:30 a.m. The sightings lasted seven days. He closed his report with, "I don’t know what they are, but they are fascinating." I concur.